Two Brothers

Further Briefings London, 1956

ONCE MORE STONE was sitting at the table with the teacups and the 1930s telephone, staring at the short plump man sitting opposite him, while the thin, quiet one in the corner looked on. True to form the short one had already started on the biscuits.

‘We are here to brief you in elementary spy craft,’ Peter Lorre said. ‘Principally codes and communications protocol. They’re going to be watching you, of course. They watch everybody from the West, but as a member of the Foreign Office you’ll be of special interest to them. The moment you attempt to establish contact with Dagmar Stengel they’re going to know about it.’

‘They know already,’ Stone replied, quietly but emphatically. ‘I’m being set up. Dagmar’s dead. It wasn’t her that sent me the letter.’

‘Well,’ Bogart conceded, ‘of course that is possible.’

‘It’s more than possible. It’s probable. A damn sight more probable than Dagmar being an East German agent. You know as well as I do that the Stasi are even more anti-Semitic than the KGB. They don’t take Jews. Particularly Jews with no training or aptitude who have spent their whole adult life either hiding in a Berlin apartment or incarcerated in a gulag.’

‘So,’ Bogart replied, ‘you think that somebody in the Stasi has communicated with you in the name of your dead sister-in-law.’

‘Yes. I think that’s exactly what has happened.’

‘Well, it’s an interesting theory,’ Bogart conceded.

Stone looked hard at his two interrogators.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘And the thing is, I find it difficult to credit that it never occurred to you.’

Bogart smiled, a kind of cheerful shrug. ‘Well, we might have considered it,’ he said pleasantly.

‘Might have done! You damn well know it! You think the Stasi are luring me to Berlin, don’t you?’

‘It’s a possibility.’

‘It’s a bloody certainty!’

‘For what purpose?’ Peter Lorre enquired. ‘Since you seem to know more about them than we do.’

‘Same purpose as yours obviously. Dirty spying. You said you were sending me to Berlin to persuade a Stasi officer to turn traitor and work for you. I think they have exactly the same idea except the target is me. I don’t flatter myself that I’m much of a catch. I’m just a translator, but I’m in the Foreign Office and what’s more I’m attached to the East German desk. That’s got to be of interest to them.’

For the first time Bogart left his corner and joined the party. He even reached over and helped himself to a biscuit.

‘You’re absolutely right, of course,’ he admitted in his soft Yorkshire burr, ‘it may very well be that you are being targeted. Which is why we must be getting along with your briefing. We don’t want to lose you to some stupid mistake on elementary protocol.’

‘Not so damned fast,’ Stone snapped. ‘I want to get this clear. You’re admitting that you were happy to send me into East Berlin even though you knew I was being set up for some kind of Stasi entrapment?’

‘We don’t know that,’ Lorre replied. ‘We don’t know anything. One never does in our game. We think you might be being set up.’

‘You told me you knew she was alive, you bastards!’

‘Perhaps we should have said that we knew somebody using her name was alive,’ Bogart conceded gently. ‘Somebody who may or may not be entitled to use it.

‘Either way works for us,’ he went on cheerfully, pouring Stone another cup of tea. ‘Whether we end up trying to recruit her or they end up trying to recruit you, it’s a very promising situation for HM Government.’

Stone lit a cigarette, trying to take it all in.

‘So right from the start you’ve had it in mind that I might return to Britain having been recruited by the Stasi?’

‘That is one possible scenario,’ Lorre admitted.

‘Were you going to warn me?’

‘We find it is generally a useful policy to refrain from divulging anything that we do not absolutely have to.’

‘So you would have sat back and watched to see if I turned traitor? Content that you could use me either way?’

‘We were content to keep the various options open for as long as possible.’

Stone smoked and sipped his tea and thought about it. ‘Well,’ he said finally, ‘at least now we understand each other a little better. So let’s get on with it, shall we? What do I need to know to be a spy?’

‘Oh, nothing too taxing,’ Peter Lorre said, once more adopting his vaguely patronizing tone. ‘Some addresses, a safe house if you need to run. Sources of money. Embassy codes and a bit of diplomatic law in case you have to try and claim immunity.’

‘I hate studying law,’ Stone said grimly.

‘Yes, we noticed you’ve been trying to pass your Bar exams,’ Lorre said. ‘Not happy at the Foreign Office?’

‘I’m not happy anywhere.’

‘There is just one thing, Mr Stone,’ Bogart said quietly. He had returned to his corner and was once more considering Stone with his enigmatic, faraway gaze.

‘Yes?’

‘The letter that first alerted you to the possibility that Frau Stengel might still be alive.’

‘Yes.’

‘That letter was sufficiently detailed and intimate to give you real hope. It was only when we told you that whoever wrote that letter was a Stasi agent that you began to doubt its credibility.’

‘That is true.’

‘So if Dagmar Fischer didn’t write it, who did? I can’t believe you haven’t thought about it. Who could still be alive today who had sufficiently intimate knowledge of your youthful relationship with Dagmar Fischer to be able to forge that letter?’

Stone waited a moment before replying.

‘I find it is generally a useful policy,’ he said finally, ‘to refrain from divulging anything that I do not absolutely have to.’