“Sir Percy is all right. He’s got guts and he’s willing to make decisions.”
“And there are not many people in London Central who answer to that description.”
“And meeting the Deputy calmed Werner down. It was when he thought they were trying to get rid of him that he got really angry. 9 “And an angry Werner is not a pretty sight.”
“I was surprised. Dicky was too. I think it’s that damned beard. Dicky was frightened of him. Dicky took refuge in Morgan’s room and closed the door, not noticing that I was standing there. He said to Morgan that all these field agents are yobs. When he realized that I’d overheard him, he smiled as if to make it into a joke.”
“What did the Deputy say to Werner?”
“No one knows. There was just the two of them. They were together for nearly an hour; I don’t know whether that means they got along just fine, or that they were at each other’s throats, but Volkmann came out all smiles so I suppose the Deputy did a good job.”
“I’m damned glad I missed it,” I said.
“Did you know he was going along to raise hell?”
“He may have mentioned it.”
“You bastard.”
“What did I do?”
“You could have talked him round the other night. You let him come into the office and raise hell. That amused you I suppose?” She said it without bitterness. In’some ways I suspected that the notion of me as a trouble-maker was not unattractive to her.
“Maybe I could have done: maybe not, But it’s not as simple as it looks. This is part of Werner’s on-going feud with Frank Harrington. Werner has always hated Frank and I’m determined not to be in the middle of any dispute between those two.
I’d end up losing two good friends and I haven’t got enough friends to risk losing two of the best ones, in order to smooth things along for Dicky and Morgan and the rest of them in the office.”
“You were lucky to avoid it all. Then yesterday your friend Lucinda came to call.”
“Cindy Prettyman?”
“Lucinda Matthews she calls herself nowadays. She was most particular about that.”
“She came to the office?”
“No, this was Saturday, she came to Balaklava Road. I was in and out with the car. I’d left the garage door open on account of that broken hinge, so she walked right in on me. I cursed. I was trying to get the children’s laundry done so that Mrs. Palmer could help with the ironing.”
“What did she want?”
“The usual. Her husband’s “murder” and the KGB slush fund and the conspiracy behind it. You know.”
“Did she tell you all that?”
“I thought she’d never stop. Finally I said you’d get together with her one day next week. Not at the office, she says, because someone might see you together. If you ask me, darling, she’s off her head.”
“Has something new happened?”
“She said I was to tell you that she has a new line on the money. And she wants a box of papers she gave you. She thinks they might contain a clue.”
“She won’t get much joy from that stuff,” I said. “Unless she’s suddenly taken up archaeology.’ Without intending to, I sighed deeply. I was not ready to face Cindy again. “She said you’d want to know. She’s’ heard of some money being moved. They are running scared, she says. They must realize that someone is on to them. All that sort of thing. She’s bonkers.”
“Cindy has been working hard.”
Gloria wasn’t too keen to endorse this praise for Cindy. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” said Gloria, “A lot of hot money is being pulled out of German banks and companies right now. It’s because the Bonn government is bringing in new laws. The EEC have instructed them to bring German corporate balance sheets into line with those of other countries. Until now German private banks and private corporations haven’t had to reveal their profits. By next year it won’t be so easy to bury money in a bank or corporation. Central Funding is sure to be preparing for that change.”
“I thought the German banks reported everything to the German tax authorities. I thought Germany didn’t have hot money.”
Gloria shook her head. “They only have to report their customers” money darling. Their own money, and all the rich pickings they make, are kept secret. You know what all those bloody High Street banks are like: well, German banks are ten times worse.”
“How do you know all this?”
“My economics classes. The West German financial markets is my special subject.”
“Did you tell Cindy this?”
“She thinks I’m your dumb blonde. She didn’t come round to talk to me.” Gloria’s grilled liver arrived. It looked good: I stole a piece of saut6 potato and let her eat her lunch in peace. J suppose eventually I’ll have to talk to Cindy. I owe it to Jim., “She says phone her at home and she’ll meet you at the weekend.” Gloria abandoned her liver and put her knife and fork down. It was a different tone of voice now: serious and concerned. “I really do think she’s unbalanced, Bernard. She parked her car miles away, in front of Inkerman Villas. I told her it was private parking there, and she might get towed away, but she wouldn’t listen. She kept looking out of the window as though someone might have followed her. When I asked her what was the matter, she said she was just admiring the view. She has a mad sort of look in her eyes. She’s scary.” “I’ll have to phone her,” I said while searching my mind for excuses not to. “But I wish she’d leave me out of it. I’ve already ruffled Bret’s feathers, and I ask myself what for? I’ve got enough work, and enough enemies, without looking for more.”
“You said you wanted to get to the bottom of it,” said Gloria. “But I just can’t spare any more time. It’s just another one of the Department’s little secrets, and if they are so determined that it remains a mystery; then let it stay a mystery. Everything I encounter mystifies me, I don’t need any more.” “Do I mystify you, my poor darling?” She reached out and stroked my hand.
“You especially,” I said.
“Do you think Alfonso would give me a bag so I can take the rest of my liver home for Muffin?” she said without expecting a reply, and added, “Your friend Cindy won’t let it go so easily.” “She has more spare time than I do, and she likes these “causes”. Cindy’s always been a bit like that: animal welfare, women priests, diesel emission is killing the trees. She has to have a cause.”
“I think she’s abnormal,” said Gloria in that flat casual voice that suggested that she didn’t care one way or the other. She had switched off now. Gloria could do that. It was a knack I would dearly like to acquire. Suddenly she raised an arm and shouted, “Can I have some coffee, Alfonso?”
“Make that two,’ I called to him but he gave no sign of having heard me.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I forgot that you don’t like me to order things when I’m with you.”
“Are you wrapping that liver up in your handkerchief. Ugh” “Muffin loves liver.” She put the little parcel in her handbag as the coffee arrived.
“I shouldn’t be drinking coffee,” I said. “I need to go to bed.” “The children won’t be home until after supper. Maybe I will go to bed too,” she said artlessly.
“Race you home”
There was plenty of work waiting for me in the office. At the top of the pile, flagged and beribboned, was a Ministry of Defence request for details of Seratex, a Czechoslovak explosive exported through the DDR and now being used in home-made “bean can grenades” and causing casualties in Northern Ireland. Under it there were some confidential questions about the Leipzig Trade Fair and - with only a number one priority some supplements from the Minister that must be ready for parliamentary question time. It was one of the natural laws of departmental life that the sort of files that Dicky chose to keep on his desk, while he worried about his career and vacillated about expedient courses of action,, were always the ones that ultimately required the most urgent response from me when he finally dumped them on my desk. My work was not made easier by the cryptic thoughts and instructions that Dicky shared with me as each flat file was dropped into my tray.
“Just keep it warm until we hear who’s going to be on the committee,” Dicky would say. Or, “Tell the old bastard to get stuffed but keep him sweet”; “This might work out if they find the right people but make sure it doesn’t bounce back our way”; and his standard reaction: “Find out what they really expect and maybe we’ll be able to meet them halfway”. These were the sort of arcane instructions I was trying to implement on Tuesday while Dicky was gone to wherever he went when there was work in the offing. And Dicky wanted everything done by the end of the day.
By the time a debonair Frank Harrington looked into my little office and invited me to go for a quick lunch, I was glassyeyed. “You’ll do yourself an injury if you try and work your way through this lot before going home,’said Frank, running the tip of an index finger across the cover of a fat file for which some unfortunate had analysed, in considerable detail, the various types of East European shops where only Western currency was accepted. Here were tables and estimates, comments and balance sheets, from Pewex in Poland, Tuwex in Czechoslovakia , Korekom in Bulgaria, compared point by point with Intershops in East Germany.
Without picking it up, Frank flicked open the file carefully so as not to get his hands dirty. “Would you believe I saw this in the tray on the old man’s desk on the day I got the Berlin job?” “Of course I would,” I said.
“It’s got fatter over the years, of course,” said Frank, who probably wanted to be congratulated on his phenomenal memory. He hooked his tightly rolled umbrella on the desk edge and then consulted his gold pocket watch as if to confirm that it was lunchtime. “Heave all this aside, Bernard. Let me buy you a pint of Guinness and a pork pie.” The illusion that Englishmen wanted a pub lunch every day was something that many expatriates cherished, so I smiled. Frank was looking very trim. He had been upstairs talking to the Deputy and was dressed in a three-piece grey worsted with gold watch-chain, wide-striped Jermyn Street shirt and a new Eton tie, of which Frank seemed to have an inexhaustible supply.
My tie was plain and polyester, and my watch Japanese and plastic. I was weary and my ears were ringing with the sound of Dicky’s voice. I’d been listening to the dictating machine, taking notes from a long rambling disquisition that Dicky had passed to me to “get into shape”. It was going to be a long job. Dicky was not good at getting his arguments into proper order, and those passages where he was consistent and logical were riddled with inaccurate “facts”. I pushed the work aside and said, “What about next week, Frank? I’m in Berlin on Wednesday.”
Frank didn’t leave. “A very quick lunch, Bernard.” I looked up to see him standing in the doorway with a forced smile on his face. It wasn’t until then I realized how much such little things meant to him.
I knew of course that Frank had always looked upon me as a surrogate son. Several people had remarked on it, usually at times when I was being especially rude or making Frank’s life difficult. Even Frank himself had more than once referred to some undefined responsibility he’d owed to my father. But Frank took it too seriously. More than once he’d risked his career to help me, and to tell the truth that made me uncomfortably indebted to him. Father-son relationships seldom run smoothly, and true to my role I’d taken considerably more from him than I ever gave, and I confess I resented being obliged to anyone, even Frank.
“You’re right, Frank. To hell with it! I took the tape cassette from the machine and locked it in my desk drawer. Maybe I should have sent it to the KGB to promote more confusion amongst the opposition. Frank reached for my coat. Frank always had a car and driver during his visits to London. It was one of the desirable perks of his job in Berlin. We went off to a “small City wine bar”; but because this was Frank Harrington’s idea, the bar was not in the City. It was south of the Thames in that borough of London which is enigmatically called “the Borough”. In a street of rundown Victorian houses off the Old Kent Road its entrance was a doorway marked only by a small polished brass plate of the sort that marks the offices of lawyers and dentists. A long underground corridor eventually opened upon a gloomy cellar with heavy pillars and low vaulting. The brickwork was painted a shiny bottle-green. Small blackboards were chalked with tempting vintage wines that were today available by the glass. A bar counter occupied most of one wall of the largest “room” and in the adjoining areas spotlights picked out small tables where shrill businessmen drank their vintage clarets and ports, nibbled at their expensive cold snacks and tried to look like tycoons avoiding the TV crews while concluding multi-million dollar City deals.
“Like it?” said Frank proudly.
“Wonderful, Frank.”
“Charming little place, eh? And no chance of meeting any of our people here, that’s what I like about it.” By “our” people he meant important Whitehall bureaucrats. He was right.
An old man dressed in appropriate wine cellar style – white shirt, bow tie and long apron - showed us to places set ready at the counter. Frank was obviously known and welcomed there, and when I saw how much he spent on a bottle of Château Palmer 1966 I could understand why. But Frank’s discursive survey of the wine list, and its extravagant outcome, was part of the paternal role he had to demonstrate.
With due ceremony the bottle was opened, the cork sniffed. Poured, swirled and tasted. Frank puckered his lips, bared his teeth and pronounced it “drinkable”. We laughed. It was another immutable aspect of Frank’s character that, along with his superlative wine, he ate, without adverse comment, yellowing Stilton, a desiccated hunk of pork pie and squashy white bread.