The Trinity Six

Chapter 27

Gaddis had realized that there was no point in door-stepping Benedict Meisner. He recalled the email Meisner had written to Charlotte threatening legal action if she continued to allege that he had been involved in faking the death of Edward Crane. If Gaddis showed up in Berlin making the same accusation, Meisner would most likely slam the door in his face or, worse, call the police.

So he needed a more subtle plan of attack. He found a listing for Meisner’s surgery online and called the number from a public phone at UCL. The receptionist spoke perfect English and Gaddis asked if it would be possible to make an appointment for Friday afternoon.

‘Of course, sir. But we have only the limited opportunities tomorrow. I can offer you a consultation with the doctor at four o’clock. Is this suiting you?’

Gaddis took the appointment, gave the number of his hotel in Berlin, and wondered what he was going to use as a cover story. I’m having trouble sleeping, Doc. Do you have a cure for paranoia? The next morning, he set his alarm for five, drove up the M1, parked his Volkswagen in an offsite car park three miles from Luton Airport and caught the 8.35 easyJet to Berlin Schonefeld. A two-euro ticket on the 171 bus from the airport took him, at snail’s pace, through a grid of bright, well-tended suburbs peopled by German geriatrics. The bus, which stopped perhaps thirty or forty times en route, eventually came to a halt in Hermannplatz, where Gaddis caught the U-Bahn to Tiergarten. The Novotel was just across the street from the underground station, an upmarket executive hotel with a polished-stone lobby, tri-lingual receptionists and businessmen killing time between meetings in a low-lit bar. Ordinarily, Gaddis would have searched out a more idiosyncratic place to stay — a twelve-room, family-run hotel, a place with some character and charm — but on this occasion he was grateful for the soullessness of the Novotel, for his starched third-floor room and his flat-screen plasma TV showing films-on-demand and CNN. It made him feel reassuringly anonymous.

He had a couple of hours to kill until his appointment with Meisner and decided to go for a walk, winding along the quiet, narrow paths of the Tiergarten, then alongside the traffic on the Strasse des 17 Juni, past the Siegessaule and the memorial to Bismarck, then east in a plumb line to the Brandenburg Gate. Though he knew that there was no possibility he would ever be able to shake off whatever surveil-lance was thrown at him by the British or the Russians, Gaddis had made an effort to ascertain if he had been followed from London. At Luton, for example, he had made a mental note of his fellow passengers as they waited in the departure lounge, then scanned the 171 bus for matching faces, trying to work out if someone was tracking him into Berlin. At the Novotel, before embarking on his walk, he had left through the main entrance, loitered in the car park for ten seconds, then turned on his heels and returned to the lobby, in an effort to flush out a tail. Though he realized that these were amateur tricks, culled from movies and thrillers, at no point did he sense that he was being followed. Increasingly, in fact, as the hours and days went by, Gaddis began to believe that his interest in ATTILA had gone completely unnoticed.

All of which was a credit to the SIS watcher who had sat five rows behind him on the Easyjet, then followed the 171 bus to Hermannplatz in a hired Audi A4 which had been waiting for him at the airport. ‘Ralph’, who was in his mid-thirties and usually operated for MI5 in London, had also taken a room at the Novotel and now tailed POLARBEAR on foot as Gaddis made his way towards the Brandenburg Gate. Two hundred metres behind him, on a rented bicycle, Ralph was being backed up by a second pavement artist, known as ‘Katie’, who had flown out to Berlin with Tanya Acocella twenty-four hours earlier. The third member of the surveil-lance team, known as ‘Des’, was holding back in the Audi on Hofjagerallee, awaiting further instructions from Tanya. Tanya herself was installed in an SIS-rented apartment half a mile from the British Embassy on Wilhelmstrasse. She knew that POLARBEAR planned to meet Meisner, but did not yet know where the encounter would take place, nor for what time it had been scheduled.

Gaddis hadn’t been to Berlin since 1983, when he had been a student on a school trip peering over the Berlin Wall at East German border guards who stared back through war-issue binoculars, trying to put a gloss on their boredom. The span of time put Gaddis in a contemplative mood and for five long minutes he stood directly beneath the Brandenburg Gate, reflecting on how the city had changed in the past quarter of a century and pressing the palms of his hands against the stonework in a moment of sentimental contemplation which sent Ralph into paroxysms.

‘He’s doing something weird underneath the Gate,’ he told Tanya, speaking into a mobile phone. ‘Looks like he’s stretching his back. It might be a signal.’

‘Hold your position,’ Tanya replied. ‘Let’s see who shows up.’

But nobody showed up. POLARBEAR eventually walked towards the Reichstag, seemed to be put off by the length of the queue taking tourists inside to gape at Norman Foster’s dome, then retraced his steps and spent fifteen minutes on the south side of the Brandenburg Gate, strolling around the Holocaust Memorial.

‘Don’t lose him in there,’ Tanya warned Ralph, because she knew that the Memorial was a five-acre maze of granite blocks, some as high as fifteen feet, into which Gaddis could quickly disappear. She was now sure that he was using amateur trade-craft — hence his little platform jig at Waterloo Station — and it was certainly not beyond his capabilities to have arranged to meet Meisner in the centre of the Memorial, where they could not possibly be overheard.

Meanwhile, Katie had ridden her bike to the corner of Ebert and Hannah-Arendt Strasses, at the south-western edge of the Memorial, working on the assumption that POLAR-BEAR would eventually come out and make his way south towards Checkpoint Charlie.

‘I reckon he’s just doing the tourist thing,’ she said, a view with which Tanya and Ralph concurred when POLARBEAR’s head was observed poking out from a granite block twenty feet from the street. Moments later, Gaddis had emerged on to Hannah-Arendt, lit a cigarette, and walked east on to Friedrichstrasse, where he stood beside a postbox, looking around for a cab.

‘He’s obviously waiting for a taxi,’ Ralph duly announced, and Tanya ordered the Audi to within two hundred metres of his position while Ralph looked around for a cab of his own.

‘This is it,’ she said. ‘Don’t lose him.’

They didn’t. The Audi got there in three minutes and tailed POLARBEAR all the way to Prenzlauerberg, a fashionable quarter of former East Berlin where the city’s bohemian elite bought their vinyl records and drank their lattes. Ralph found a taxi two minutes after Gaddis but was called off after being reassured by Des that the ‘situation is very much under what I like to call control’. At 15.46 Gaddis was observed paying the driver of the cab and stepping out on to Schonhauser Allee.

‘He’s a block from Meisner’s office,’ Tanya declared, looking down at a map of Berlin. She had visited the location at nine o’clock the previous evening. ‘Let’s see if we can get his phone to work.’

POLARBEAR’s mobile was her only potential problem. Two days earlier, when Gaddis had left it unattended in his office at UCL, an SIS technician had succeeded in installing a piece of software which turned the phone into a remotely activated microphone. The bug had worked once, successfully, when Ralph had tested it from a car parked outside Gaddis’s house, but things were always more complicated in an overseas location. Meisner’s surgery was also on the third floor; getting a clear signal down to the Audi would take a mixture of luck and finesse.

Out on the street, Gaddis had found the entrance. A plaque outside announced:

BENEDICT MEISNER ACUPUNKTUR HOMOOPATHIE WIRBELSAULEN UND GELENKTHERAPIE

It was a mystery. How did a trained medical doctor end up practising acupuncture and homeopathy in Berlin? Had Meisner been struck off? Gaddis looked at his watch and realized that he had ten minutes to kill before his appointment. It was enough time in which to call Josephine Warner.

‘He’s taking out his phone,’ Des announced.

Josephine answered the call with an enthusiasm appropriate to the circumstances.

‘Sam! Are you here?’

‘ Ja,’ Gaddis replied in cod-German, immediately regretting the joke. ‘How’s your sister?’

She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘Annoying the shit out of me. I’ve realized why I never come to visit.’

Gaddis smiled. ‘Then I can persuade you to abandon her for dinner tomorrow night?’

‘You definitely can.’ Josephine was already flirting with him and — who knows? — perhaps even toying with the prospect of a post-dinner nightcap on the third floor of the Tiergarten Novotel.

‘I know a place,’ Gaddis told her, because he had researched decent Berlin restaurants on the Internet and booked a table for two — just in case — at Cafe Jacques in Neukolln.

Before long, they had fixed a time and a place and Gaddis had hung up, ringing the bell of Meisner’s surgery. Des duly activated the bug in POLARBEAR’s mobile and, within moments, Tanya Acocella was listening to Gaddis as he introduced himself to the receptionist.

‘ Guten Tag,’ he said. ‘I apologize. I don’t speak German.’

‘This is all right, sir.’

‘I have an appointment with Doctor Meisner at four o’clock.’

To Tanya’s relief, the take quality was first class; she was listening through a set of headphones and it was as if the conversation was taking place in the next room. She heard the receptionist asking Gaddis to fill out a form — ‘just some of your personal and medical information please’ — then the sigh of Gaddis slumping into an armchair, a brief crash on the bug as he reached for a pen in the inside pocket of his jacket, and a rustle of paper as he filled out the form.

Three minutes later, a telephone rang in the waiting room. The receptionist picked it up and Gaddis was invited ‘please to go through now’ to Meisner’s surgery. He offered to return the medical form, but was told to keep it with him and to ‘please to show it to the doctor when you arrive’. Tanya tried to picture Gaddis ducking through the connecting door and shaking Meisner’s hand. She was wondering what the hell he was planning to say to him.

‘So! We are both doctors!’

Meisner had a thick German accent and sounded chirpy and easygoing.

‘That’s right.’ Gaddis’s voice was flatter, more nervous. ‘Different areas of expertise, though. I don’t tend to save lives on a daily basis.’

She liked that, the flattery. Gaddis was softening him up.

‘Oh, I don’t save lives any more, Doctor. I simply relieve the pain. And what is your area of expertise?’

‘I’m an academic, at University College, London.’

‘Ah! UCL! Sit down, please, sit down.’

Another cushioned slump as Gaddis settled into a chair. Tanya heard him explain that he was a lecturer in Russian History in the Department of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies. Meisner kept saying ‘ Ja, ja ’ and appeared to be enormously interested in everything Gaddis was saying.

‘Really? Is that right? How fascinating. I myself lived in London some time ago.’

‘You did? Whereabouts?’

‘In the Hampstead area. I worked at St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington for a number of years. Do you know it?’

‘I know it.’

This, of course, was POLARBEAR’s opportunity and Tanya wondered if he would take it. Typically, in a conversation of this type, it was better to show one’s hand earlier, rather than to build up an implicit trust which was then shattered by the truth.

‘In fact, that’s sort of the reason why I’ve come today.’

He was going for it. Tanya heard Meisner say: ‘I am sorry, I don’t quite understand’ and felt her stomach kick. She pressed the headphones closer to her ears.

‘I’m afraid I’m here under false pretences, Doctor.’

‘False pretences-’

Meisner sounded confused, defensive.

Gaddis pressed on. ‘I don’t have an underlying medical condition. I’m not looking for treatment of any kind. I wanted to talk to you about your time at St Mary’s. I knew that you wouldn’t see me if I told you who I was or why I was coming here today.’

Tanya tried to imagine Meisner’s reaction. He wore tortoise-shell glasses over lively, expressive eyes, and his broad, tanned face was genial and unassuming. There was a long silence. Somebody sniffed. She could hear a tapping sound and assumed that Meisner was rapping his fingers on the surface of his desk.

‘You were in communication with a friend of mine,’ Gaddis began.

‘Charlotte Berg,’ Meisner replied immediately. All of his bedside bonhomie had evaporated. ‘I must ask you to leave immediately.’ Tanya heard the noise of a chair scraping back on a hard floor. Meisner was getting to his feet.

Gaddis said: ‘Please, just hear me out. I have come here to warn you. My visit is for your own safety.’

‘Doctor Gaddis, please do not let me lose my temper. Do you wish me to call the police? I can either ask you to leave in a civilized fashion or I will have no hesitation-’

‘Charlotte Berg is dead.’ POLARBEAR had held his nerve. ‘She was most probably killed by Russian intelligence.’

The ensuing silence was so pronounced that Tanya wondered if the microphone had failed. She was about to call Des when Meisner responded:

‘And why is this of any concern to me?’

‘You remember Calvin Somers?’

‘As I told Miss Berg, I have no recollection of an individual of that name and, if you insist on making allegations of this kind, I will have no hesitation to pursue libel actions against you in a court of law.’

‘Somers is also dead.’ Gaddis’s reply contained just the right level of threat. ‘He was murdered, again most probably by Russian intelligence.’

She heard Meisner sniff, then a hole of silence. Gaddis spoke into the void.

‘I don’t need to tell you that this only leaves you and the porter still alive.’

‘The porter?’

‘Waldemar. Lucy Forman died in a car accident in 2001.’ This piece of information pushed Meisner back into his chair. Tanya wondered if either man knew that Waldemar had died in Krakow in 1999. ‘I don’t know if the crash was an accident or if it was engineered. All I’m saying is that you need to watch your back.’

‘That is not what you are saying, Doctor.’

Gaddis conceded the point. ‘You’re right. I need your assistance as well. There are things you may know which could help to keep both of us alive.’

Another silence. Tanya scratched an itch at the end of her nose.

‘Do you still retain any links to Douglas Henderson?’ Gaddis asked. His tone of voice had become more conciliatory. ‘Are you aware that his real name is Sir John Brennan and that he is now the Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service?’

Careful, Sam, thought Tanya. Don’t be giving away too many of our secrets.

‘I did not know this,’ Meisner replied. His throat was dry and it sounded as though he took a sip of water.

‘The man whose death you orchestrated was called Edward Crane. He was a double agent for MI6. The Russians wanted him dead, so Brennan made them think that he had died of cancer.’

‘I had always wanted to know the answer to this question,’ Meisner replied quietly.

Gaddis pushed for more. ‘Do you remember anything at all about Crane? Did MI6 give you any indication what would happen to him? Were you ever asked to perform similar duties for British Intelligence at any point in the future?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What about ATTILA? Did anybody ever mention that name to you? Has anybody, apart from Charlotte Berg, ever spoken to you about what happened in 1992?’

‘You are the first person I have ever spoken to about it.’

Without seeing his eyes, Tanya could not tell if Meisner was lying, but the answer sounded truthful enough.

‘Then why do you think Somers was killed? Why do you think the Russians murdered Charlotte?’

Meisner emitted a strange, choked laugh. ‘Doctor Gaddis, it sounds to me as though these are questions to which you yourself should know the answer. I have nothing more. I have done nothing wrong. I was paid by MI6 to keep my mouth closed. I have kept my mouth closed. I signed your Official Secrets Act, just as once upon a time I signed a Hippocratic Oath. These things mean something to me. My reputation is important. If Benedict Meisner puts his name to something, if he makes a promise of any kind, then he keeps it. This is not a very modern concept, I grant you, but it is nevertheless essential to my own philosophy.’

There was another silence. The headphones had formed what felt like a pressure seal around Tanya’s ears and she briefly pulled them apart, feeling the sweat on her temples.

‘What about Thomas Neame?’ Gaddis asked. ‘Does that name mean anything to you?’

It was almost as if Tanya could see Meisner shaking his head. ‘I have never heard this name. Who is he please?’

She swore lightly under her breath and thought back to the Vauxhall Cross courtyard. Sooner or later, she had told Brennan, Gaddis is going to find out that Neame is the sixth man. Exactly, the Chief had said. And when he does, that’s precisely the point at which we step in. She had been furious at his deception, humiliated that her boss should have tasked her with tracking Gaddis’s movements without first supplying what was surely the most vital piece of information associated with the operation. Need to know, I’m afraid, he had told her, trying to soften the blow with one of his toadying smiles. Only a handful of people in the world know what happened to Edward Crane. Now you’re one of them.

Gaddis was doing something in his seat. Tanya could hear what sounded like a scratching of cloth and wondered if he was taking off his jacket. But then the take quality became even clearer and she realized that POLARBEAR had removed the mobile phone.

‘I have a photograph of him,’ he was saying. Tanya put two and two together as Gaddis began to click through the images in the phone’s gallery. ‘Have you seen this man before?’

She waited. There was nothing she could do to prevent what was about to happen. She heard Meisner lift out of his chair and then the noise of the phone being passed across the desk. The sound Meisner made when he saw the photograph of Neame in the pub was just what she had expected: a breath of disbelief.

‘But this is the man,’ he told Gaddis. ‘This is the man who was admitted to the hospital. The person in this photograph is not your Thomas Neame. The person in the photograph is Edward Crane.’