Spy Sinker

22

England. April 1984.

How far can you run into a wood? asks the ancient schoolboy joke. Halfway: after that you're running out. A missile stops in the air and begins to fall back to the ground, a sportsman's career reaches a physical peak at which it begins decline. A flower in full bloom falls, water at its most exuberant disappears into vapour. For most things in nature there comes a moment when triumph is doom in disguise. So it was for Pavel Moskvin that lovely day in Berlin when, fittingly enough, the first growths of spring marked the end of winter.

Erich Stinnes was also riding high. Everything had gone as he'd predicted. The British seemed to have accepted him at face value because they found it so difficult to believe that anyone could resist their way of life. Stinnes had played his role to perfection. Tropfenweise, drip by drip, he had worn away the hard diamond face of Rensselaer's reputation until, in front of the committee, he shattered it completely.

The culmination of all that Stinnes had worked for came on what had promised to be a routine visit of the 'Stinnes committee' to Berwick House, where he was being held. An eighteenth-century manor set in seven acres of attractive English countryside, its fifteen-foot-high stone wall and ancient moat had made it easy to adapt into a detention centre. The Whitehall clerks, who had seized house and contents from its owners by means of some catch-all legislation, had done little to repair the damage caused by the Luftwaffe's bombs. There was a musty smell in the house, and if you looked closely enough at the rotting structure you'd find the woodworms were working harder than anyone.

The committee travelled together in a bus except for Bret. He arrived in his chauffeur-driven Bentley having used the lunch hour to squeeze in an appointment with the doctor. He looked drawn, and the skin under his eyes had blackened so that the eternally youthful Bret was suddenly aged.

There was such a crowd that they all sat round the big polished table in what at one time had been the dining room. On the panelled wall there was a huge oil painting. A family posed stiffly on a hill near the newly built Berwick House, and stared at the painter as he extended to Gainsborough what is reputed to be the sincerest form of flattery.

The committee were all trying to show how knowledgeable and important they were. Bret Rensselaer sat at one end, and thus established his authority as chairman. Stinnes faced him at the far end, an adversary's positioning that Bret afterwards thought might have contributed to the subsequent fiasco. Bret looked at his watch frequently, but otherwise sat with that look of attention that people who sit on too many committees master, to conceal the fact that they are half asleep. He had heard it all before. Well, thought Stinnes, I'll see if I can wake you up, Mr Rensselaer.

In a committee like that, there would always be a couple of know-alls. It was exactly the same in Moscow: Stinnes could have named their counterparts. The worst bore was Billy Slinger from MIS, a scrawny fellow with a thin, carefully trimmed moustache and a restrained Tyneside accent that Stinnes found challenging. He had been attached to the committee to advise on communications. Of course he felt he must prove to them all how clever he was.

Erich Stinnes had endured the ups and downs of his detention with little change, but there was not much to change. Stinnes was a tough middle-aged man with a sallow face, and hair that he liked to keep as short as possible. When he took off his metal-rimmed glasses – which he did frequently – he blinked like an owl and looked round at the committee as if he preferred to see them slightly out of focus.

Stinnes fielded the questions artfully and let Slinger demonstrate his technical knowledge until he got on to signals procedures. This was something that Moscow had agreed he could disclose, so, quietly and conversationally, he went through the Embassy routines. He started with the day-to-day domestics and went on to a few KGB encoding styles. These were technical developments that Slinger was unlikely to be familiar with, and thus he was unlikely to know that they had already been superseded or were used only for mundane traffic.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched Rensselaer uncoil like a serpent disturbed by the approach of heavy footsteps. 'This is all new to me,' said Slinger repeatedly, his accent more pronounced as he filled sheets of paper with notes scribbled so fast and so excitedly that his pencil broke and he had to grab another and ask Stinnes to slow down.

The other members of the committee became enthusiastic too. Between eager questions from Slinger, one of the committee asked him why he hadn't disclosed these gems earlier. Stinnes didn't answer immediately. He looked at Bret Rensselaer and then looked away and took a long time lighting up a cheroot.

'Well?' said Bret finally. 'Let's hear it.'

'I did,' said Stinnes finally. 'I told you during the first days but I thought it must be stuff you knew already.'

Bret jumped up as if he was going to start shouting. They all looked at him. And then Bret realized that an argument with Stinnes in front of the committee was only going to make him look ridiculous. He sat down again and said, 'Carry on, Slinger. Let's get it down on paper.'

Stinnes inhaled on his cheroot and looked from one to the other like a social worker in the presence of a combative family. Then he started to give them even more material: Foreign Country routeings, Embassy signals room times and procedures and even Embassy contact lists.

It took about an hour, and included some long silences while Stinnes racked his brains, and a few little Stinnes jokes which – due to the tension in the room – everyone laughed at. By the end, the committee was intoxicated with success. Satisfaction flushed their faces and circulated through their veins like freshly sugared blood. And not the least of their triumph was the warm feeling they got from knowing that Bret Rensselaer, so cold and patrician, so efficient and patriotic, was going to get his rightful comeuppance.

As Stinnes left the room to be taken upstairs he looked at Bret Rensselaer. Neither man registered any change of facial expression and yet there was in that exchange of looks the recognition that a contest had been fought and won.

But Bret Rensselaer was not the sort of man who would lie down and play dead to oblige an enemy. Bret Rensselaer was an American: pragmatic, resourceful and without that capacity for long-term rancour that the European is born with. When Bret faced the wall of opposition which Moskvin and Stinnes had between them constructed brick by brick, he did something that neither of the Russians had provided for. Rensselaer went to Berlin and pleaded for the aid of Bernard Samson, a man he'd come to dislike, reasoning that Samson was even less conventional than he was, and certainly far more savage.

'What do we do now?' Bret asked. Stampeded by Stinnes and faced with the prospect of arrest, Bret ran. He was a fugitive and looked like one: frightened and dishevelled and lacking all that smooth Rensselaer confidence.

'What do we do?' echoed Samson. This was Bernard's town and both of them knew it. 'We scare the shit out of them, that's what we do.'

'How?'

'Suppose we tell them we are pulling out Stinnes's toenails one by one?'

Bret shivered. He wasn't in the mood for jokes. 'Be sensible. Bernard. They are holding your friend Volkmann over there. Can't you see what that means?'

'They won't touch Werner.'

'Why not?'

'Because they know that for anything they dream up to do to Werner I'll do it twice to Stinnes, and do it slowly.'

'Is that a risk worth taking?' asked Bret. 'I thought Volkmann was your closest friend.'

'What difference does that make?' asked Bernard.

Alarmed, Bret said, 'Don't get this one wrong, Bernard. There is too much riding on it.' Samson had always been a hard-nosed gambler, but was this escalating response the way to go? Or had Bernard gone mad?

'I know the way these people think, Bret. Moscow has an obsession about getting agents out of trouble. That is the Moscow law: KGB men ignore it at their peril.'

'So we offer to trade Stinnes for Werner Volkmann?'

'But not before letting them know that Stinnes is going to go through the wringer.'

'Jesus! I don't like it. Will Fiona be one of the people making the decision?' asked Bret.

Bernard looked at him, trying to see into his mind, but Bret's mind was not so easy to see into. 'I should think so,' said Bernard.

'Frau Samson,' said Moskvin with exaggerated courtesy and an unctuous smile. 'Have you prepared charges against this West German national Volkmann?'

'I am in the process of doing so,' Fiona Samson fielded the question. She'd learned a lot about Moskvin in the time she'd been working here. Some people thought Moskvin was a fool but they were wrong: Moskvin had a quick and cunning mind. He was pushy and gauche but he was not stupid. Neither was he clumsy, at least not in the physical sense. Every day he was in the basement: weight-lifting in the gym, swimming in the pool, shooting on the range or doing some other sort of physical exercise. He was no longer young, but still he had that overabundance of energy that is usually confined to childhood.

'Do you have another file on him, Comrade Colonel?' he asked sweetly.

Fiona was disconcerted by this question. She had created the Volkmann file that was open on her desk. 'No more than what you've seen already.'

'No more than this?' said Moskvin, and was able to make it into a very unfavourable pronouncement.

'I know…'she stopped.

'Yes? What do you know?'

'In the past he has worked for the SIS office in Berlin.'

Moskvin looked at her. 'Suppose Moscow wanted to see the file on Volkmann? Is this what we'd send?' He flipped the card cover of the file so that his fingernails made a click. It sounded empty.

'Yes,' said Fiona.

Moskvin looked at her and made no secret of the extent of his contempt. Intimidation was a part of his working method. By now she'd recognized him for what he really was. She'd known plenty of other men like Moskvin. She'd known them at Oxford: rowdy sportsmen, keenly aware of their physical strength, and relishing the latent violence that was within them.

'I know Volkmann,' she said. 'I've known him for years. Of course he works for SIS Berlin. SIS London too.'

'And yet you've done nothing about it?' Moskvin looked at her with contempt.

'Not yet,' said Fiona.

'Not yet,' he said. 'Well, now we'll do something, shall we?' He was patronizing her, smiling as tyrants do with small children. 'We'll talk to Volkmann… perhaps scare him a little.'

'How?'

'You might learn something, Frau Samson. He hasn't been told that he's being released in exchange for Major Stinnes. We must make him sweat.'

'Volkmann gets his money from doing business in our Republic. Without that he would be penniless. He might be persuaded to work for us.'

Moskvin eyed her. 'Why would he do that?'

'He's back and forth all the time. That's why he was so easy to pick up. Why shouldn't he tell us what happens over there?'

'You could do that?'

'I could try. You say he's being held in Babelsberg?'

'You'll need a car.'

'I'll drive myself.'

'Bring him back here. I'll want to see him too,' said Moskvin.

She smiled coldly at him. 'Of course, Colonel Moskvin. But if we frighten him too much he won't come back.'

It had happened before. That was the trouble with agents: you sent them to the West and sometimes they simply stayed there and thumbed their noses at you. 'He has no relatives here, does he?'

'He'll work for us, Colonel Moskvin. He is the sort of man who loves a good secret.'

Now that she had equated Moskvin with those Oxford hearties, she found herself remembering her college days. How she'd hated it: the good times she'd had were now forgotten. She recalled the men she'd known, and those long evenings in town, watching boorish undergraduates drinking too much and making fools of themselves. Keen always to make the women students feel like inferior beings. Boys with uncertain sexual preferences, truly happy only in male society, arms interlinked, singing together very loudly and staggering away to piss against the wall.

She went to Babelsberg in the southwest of Berlin to get Werner Volkmann. It was not very far as the crow flies, but crows flew across the Western sector of the city while good communists had to journey round its perimeter. This was just outside the city limits and not a part of Berlin: it was Potsdam in the DDK, and so the British and American 'protecting powers' did not have the legal right to come poking around here. Volkmann was in the Ausland Block, some buildings that had started out as administration offices of the famous UFA film studios.

Behind the empty film library building, and the workshops, there was an old backlot where the remains of an eighteenth-century village street built originally for the wartime film Münchhausen could be seen. 'That was Marlene Dietrich's dressing room,' said the elderly policeman who took her to the interview room. He indicated a store room with a padlock on the door.

'Yes,' said Fiona. The same policeman had said the same thing to her the last time she was here. The interview room had a barred window through which she could see the cobbled yard where she'd parked her car.

'Shall I bring the prisoner?'

'Bring him.'

Werner Volkmann looked bewildered when he was brought in. Hands cuffed behind his back, he was wearing a scuffed leather overcoat upon which there were streaks of white paint. His hair was uncombed and he was unshaven.

'Do you recognize me, Werner?'

'Of course I recognize you, Frau Samson.' He was angry and sullen.

'I'm taking you to my office in Karl Liebknecht Strasse. Do I need an armed police officer to keep you under observation?'

'I'm not going to run away, if that's what you mean.'

'Have they told you what you are charged with?'

'I want a lawyer, a lawyer from the West.'

'That's a silly thing to ask, Werner.'

'Why is it?'

It was extraordinary that Werner, a German who came here regularly, still did not understand. Well, perhaps the best way to start was to make him realize what he was up against. This is the DDR, Werner, and it is 1984. We have a socialist system. The people…'

'The government.'

'The people,' she repeated, 'don't just control the politics and the economy, they control the courts, the lawyers and the judges. They control the newspapers, the youth leagues and the women's associations and chess clubs and anglers' societies. The privilege of writing books, collecting stamps, singing at the opera or working at a lathe – in fact the right to work anywhere – can be withdrawn at any time.'

'So don't ask for a lawyer from the West.'

'So don't ask for a lawyer from the West,' agreed Fiona. 'You'll have to sit in the back of the car. I can't remove the handcuffs. I can't even carry the key. It's a regulation.'

'Can I wash and shave?'

'At the other end. Do you have any personal possessions here?'

Werner shrugged and didn't answer.

'Let's go.'

'Why you?' asked Werner as they were walking across the cobbled courtyard to her Wartburg car.

'Machtpolitik,' said Fiona. It meant negotiations under the threat of violence and was a uniquely German word.

None of the long-dead city officials who drew the outlandish shape of the old boundaries could have guessed that one day Berlin would be thus circumscribed and divided. Jutting southwards, Lichtenrade – where the S-Bahn line is chopped off to become a terminal, and where Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms are streets that end at the Wall – provides an obstacle around which Fiona had to drive to get back to her office in central Berlin.

The normal route back kept to the main road through Mahlow, but Fiona went on to back streets that might have saved her a few minutes in travelling time, except that when she got beyond Mahlow she turned off to a sleepy little neighbourhood beyond Ziethen. Here the pre-war housing of a 'Gartenstadt' had spilled over the Wall into the Democratic Republic. Bordered on three sides by the West, these wide tree-lined roads were empty, and the neighbourhood quiet.

'Werner,' said Fiona as she stopped the car under the trees of a small urban park and switched off the engine. She turned to look back at him. 'You are just a card in a poker game. You know that, I'm sure.'

'What happens to a card in a poker game?' asked Werner.

'At the end of the game you are shuffled and put away for another day.'

'Does it hurt?'

'Within a few days you'll be back in the West. I guarantee it.' A car came very slowly up the street. It passed them and, when it was about a hundred yards ahead, stopped. Werner said nothing and neither did Fiona. The car turned as if to do a U-turn but stopped halfway and then reversed. Finally it went past them again and turned to follow the sign that pointed to Selchow. 'It was a car from a driving school,' said Fiona.

'Why are you telling me this?' said Werner. The car had made him jumpy.

'I want you to take a message.'

'A written message?'

Good old Werner. So he wasn't so simple. 'No, Werner, a verbal message.'

'To Bernard?'

'No. In fact you'd have to promise that Bernard will know nothing of it.'

'What sort of game is this?'

'You come through regularly, Werner. You could be the perfect go-between.'

'Are you asking me to work for Moscow?'

'No I'm not.'

'I see.' Werner sat back, uncomfortable with his hands cuffed behind him. Having thought about it he smiled at her. 'But how can I be sure?' It was a worried smile.

'I can't do anything about the handcuffs, Werner. It is not permitted to have keys together with prisoners in transit.'

'How can I be sure of you?' he said again.

'I want you to go and talk with Sir Henry Clevemore. Would that satisfy your doubts?'

'I don't know him. I've never even seen him.'

'At his home, not in the office. I'll give you a private phone number. You'll leave a message on the answering machine.'

'I'm not sure.'

'Jesus Christ, Werner! Pull yourself together and decide!' she yelled. She closed her eyes. She had lost control of herself. The driving school car had done it.

Werner looked at her with amazement and suddenly understood the panic she had shown. 'Why me? Why now? What about your regular contact?'

'I have no regular contact. I have been finding my way around, using dumps. London would probably have sent someone in a month or so. But this is a perfect opportunity. I will enrol you as a Stasi agent. You'll report to me personally and each time you do I will give you the material to take back.'

'That would work,' said Werner, thinking about it. 'Would Sir Henry arrange material for me to bring?'

'All my reports must be committed to memory,' said Fiona. She had done it now: she had put herself at Werner's mercy. It would be all right. Later she would get Werner to tell her about her husband and her children but not now. One thing at a time.

Now he was beginning to believe. His face lit up and his eyes widened. He was to participate in something really tremendous. 'What a coup!' he said softly and with ardent admiration. In that moment he had become her devoted slave.

'Bernard must not know,' said Fiona.

'Why?'

'For all kinds of reasons: he'll worry and give the game away. He's not good at concealing his emotions. You must know that.'

He looked out of the window. Fiona had chosen her man well. Werner had always wanted to be a secret agent. He yearned for it as other people crave to be a film star or score goals for their country or host a chat show on TV. Werner knew about espionage. He read books about it, clipped newspapers and memorized its ups and downs with a dedication that bordered on the obsessional. There was no need for him to say yes; they both knew that he couldn't resist it. 'I still can't believe it,' he said.

The driving school car came into sight as it turned the corner. It slowed and stopped, the driver carefully indicating his intentions with unnecessary signals. 'I think we should go,' said Fiona.

'I'll do it,' said Werner quietly.

'I knew you would,' said Fiona as she started the engine.

She overtook the driving school car and turned as if heading back towards Mahlow. It was a silly precaution that meant nothing. 'You're a brave woman, Fiona,' said Werner suddenly.

'No one,' said Fiona. 'Sir Henry and no one else unless he authorizes it to you personally.'

'How long will it go on?' said Werner.

'One year; perhaps two,' said Fiona.

'I thought they might make me persona non grata,' said Werner. 'I was worried about my work.'

'You'll be all right now,' said Fiona. 'It will be a perfect set-up.'

'Bernard must not know,' said Werner. The idea of having a secret from his best friend appealed to Werner. One day he'd surprise Bernard. It would be worth waiting for.

'Let me tell you what to say when we get back to the office. You'll see a Russian KGB colonel named Moskvin. Don't let him bluff you or bully you. I'll make sure you are okay.'

'Moskvin.'

'He's not a long-term problem,' said Fiona.

'Why not?'

'He's not a long-term problem,' said Fiona. 'He is being got rid of. Just believe me. Now let me tell you how we're going to handle this business of your reporting to me.'

Two days later the exchange took place: Erich Stinnes went East to resume his work for the KGB while Werner Volkmann was freed and came West. The KGB inquiry into the treason of Pavel Moskvin sentenced him to death. The court decreed that verdict, sentence and execution must all remain secret: it was the KGB way of dealing with its own senior personnel. The local KGB commander – a general who had been a close friend of Moskvin's father – decided that 'killed in action in the West' would be merciful and expedient, and so arranged matters. But Moskvin did not accept his fate readily. He tried to escape. The resulting exchange of fire took place on the abandoned Nollendorfplatz S-Bahn station in West Berlin, now converted to a flea market. Moskvin died. Bret Rensselaer, demonstrating his loyalty to the Crown, led the chase after Moskvin and was shot and hurt so seriously that he never resumed his duties in London.

The official British version of the events is very short. It was drafted by Silas Gaunt, who omitted any mention of the exchange of men because neither was a British national. It says that Pavel Moskvin – a KGB colonel on official duties in the West sector of Berlin – ran amok in the flea market. He fired his pistol indiscriminately until the Berlin municipal police were able to subdue him. Two passers-by were shot dead, four were injured, two seriously. Moskvin turned his own pistol on himself at the moment of arrest.

The secret file compiled by the West German government in Bonn had the advantage of detailed reports from both the West Berlin police and their intelligence service. It says that Moskvin was part of a KGB party who'd come West to arrange the exchange of a West German and a Soviet national held by the British SIS. This account says that Moskvin's death was an execution carried out by a KGB team which used two motor bikes to follow Moskvin's car. While it was halted on Tauentzienstrasse, near the KaDeWe department store, an accomplice threw a plastic bag filled with white paint over its windscreen. Moskvin left the car and ran to the S-Bahn station, shooting at his pursuers. At this time civilians were injured by gunshot wounds. When Moskvin jumped down from the platform to the train tracks, perhaps believing he could run along the railway and across the Wall, he was shot dead by a round fired from a Russian Army sniper's rifle. The perpetrator was never found but is believed to have been one of the KGB hit team who'd been seen coming through a checkpoint earlier that day. In support of this theory it is pointed out that there was never a request for Moskvin's body to be returned to the East.

A few days after the shooting, an unofficial mention of the body by British contacts brought from the Soviets only puzzled denials that any Colonel Pavel Moskvin had ever existed. There was no post-mortem. The body was buried at the small cemetery in Berlin-Rudow, very near the Wall. It was at this time that the Russians spontaneously offered to return to the West the remains of Max Busby, an American shot while crossing the Wall in 1978, Some inferred that it was part of a secret deal. Both bodies were buried at night in adjoining plots. It was at the time when the new drainage was being installed at the cemetery, and the burials were unattended except for workmen, a city official and two unidentified representatives of the Protecting Powers. The graves were not marked.

There were other versions too: some less bizarre, some considerably more so. One report, neatly bound and complete with photos of Kleiststrasse, Nollendorfplatz, the S-Bahn station, the U-Bahn station and a coloured street plan showing Moskvin's path in red broken line, had been assembled by the CIA office in Berlin, working in conjunction with its offices in Bonn and London. This revealed that Moskvin had been preparing material to incriminate falsely an unnamed US citizen resident in London. It concluded that the KGB were determined that Moskvin should not be taken alive and questioned by the British.

Bernard Samson was seen firing at Moskvin but his report, given verbally, said that his rounds all went wide. Some people have pointed out that the great preponderance of rounds that Samson has been known to fire, prior to this, hit his targets. Frank Harrington might have thrown some light on the subject, for Frank had been seen on the S-Bahn station brandishing a gun (something that stayed in the minds of those who saw him because Frank had never been seen with a pistol before, or since), but London Central never asked Frank for an account of it.

Bret Rensselaer was also there but Bret was never questioned specifically. He was hit and severely injured, and by the time he'd recovered sufficiently to contribute an account of it, the reports were complete and the incident had passed into Berlin's crowded history. The doctors at the Steglitz Clinic saved Rensselaer's life. He was in the operating theatre for three hours and went from there into an intensive-care ward. Next day his brother flew in on some specially assigned US Air Force jet that came complete with doctors and nurses. He took Bret back to America with him.