Spy Line. Len Deighton
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what Moscow makes of it all …’
He was beginning to sound like Rudi Kleindorf; in fact, he was beginning to sound like a whole lot of people who couldn’t resist giving me good advice. I said, ‘Will you drive me over to Lange’s place?’
For a moment he thought about it. ‘There’s no one there.’
‘How do you know?’ I said.
‘I’ve phoned him every day, just the way you asked. I’ve sent letters too.’
‘I’m going to beat on his door. Perhaps Der Grosse wasn’t kidding. Maybe Lange is playing deaf: maybe he’s in there.’
‘Not answering the phone and not opening his mail? That’s not like Lange.’ Lange was an American who’d lived in Berlin since it was first built. Werner disliked him. In fact it was hard to think of anyone who was fond of Lange except his long-suffering wife: and she visited relatives several times a year.
‘Maybe he’s going through a funny time too,’ I said.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Just drop me outside.’
‘You’ll need a ride back,’ said Werner in that plaintive, martyred tone he used when indulging me in my most excruciating foolishness.
When we reached the street where John ‘Lange’ Koby lived I thought Werner was going to drive away and leave me to it, but the hesitation he showed was fleeting and he waved away my suggestions that I go up there alone.
Dating from the last century it was a great grey apartment block typical of the whole city. Since my previous visit the front door had been painted and so had the lobby, and one side of the entrance hall had two lines of new tin postboxes, each one bearing a tenant’s name. But once up the first staircase all attempts at improvement ceased. On each landing a press-button timer switch provided a dim light and a brief view of walls upon which sprayed graffiti proclaimed the superiority of football teams and pop groups, or simply made the whorls and zigzag patterns that proclaim that graffiti need not be a monopoly of the literate.
Lange’s apartment was on the top floor. The door was old and scuffed, the bell push had had its label torn off as if someone had wanted the name removed. Several times I pressed the bell but heard no sound from within. I knocked, first with my knuckles and then with a coin I found in my pocket.
The coin gave me an idea. ‘Give me some money,’ I told Werner.
Obliging as ever he opened his wallet and offered it. I took a hundred-mark note and tore it gently in half. Using Werner’s slim silver pencil, I wrote ‘Lange – open up you bastard’ on one half of the note and pushed it under the door.
‘He’s not there,’ said Werner, understandably disconcerted by my capricious disposal of his money. ‘There’s no light.’
Werner meant there was no light escaping round the door or from the transom. I didn’t remind him that John Lange Koby had been in the espionage game a very long time indeed. Whatever one thought of him – and my own feelings were mixed – he knew a thing or two about fieldcraft. He wasn’t the sort of man who would pretend he was out of town while letting light escape from cracks around his front door.
I put a finger to my lips and no sooner had I done so than the timer switch made a loud plop and we were in darkness. We stood there a long time. It seemed like hours although it was probably no more than three minutes.
Suddenly the door bolts were snapped back with a sound like gunshots. Werner gasped: he was startled and so was I. Lange recognized that and laughed at us, ‘Step inside folks,’ he said. He held out his hand and I gave it the slap that he expected as a greeting. Only a glimmer of light escaped from his front door. ‘Bernard! You four-eyed son of a bitch!’ Looking over my shoulder he said, ‘And who’s this well-dressed gent with false moustache and big red plastic nose? Can it be Werner Volkmann?’ I felt Werner stiffen with anger. Lange continued, not expecting a reply. ‘I thought you guys were Jehovah’s Witnesses! The hallelujah peddlers been round just about every night this week. Then I thought to myself, “It’s Sunday, it’s got to be their day off!”’ He laughed.
Lange read my written message again and tucked the half banknote into the pocket of his shirt as we went inside. In the entrance there was an inlaid walnut hallstand with a mirror and hooks for coats, a shelf for hats and a rack for sticks and umbrellas. He took Werner’s hat and overcoat and showed us how it worked. It took up almost all the width of the corridor and we had to squeeze past it. I noticed that Lange didn’t switch on the light until the front door was closed again. He didn’t want to be silhouetted in the doorway. Was he afraid of something, or someone? No, not Lange: that belligerent old bastard was fearless. He pushed aside a heavy curtain. The curtain was in fact an old grey Wehrmacht blanket, complete with the stripe that tells you which end is for your feet. It hung from a rail on big wooden rings. It kept the cold draught out and also prevented any light escaping from the sitting room.
They only had one big comfortable room in which to sit and watch television, so Lange used it as his study too. There were bookshelves filling one wall from floor to ceiling, and even then books were double-banked and stuffed horizontally into every available space. An old school-desk near the window held more books and papers and a big old-fashioned office typewriter upon which German newspapers and a cup and saucer were precariously balanced.
‘Look who finally found out where we live,’ Lange said to his wife in the throaty Bogart voice that suited his American drawl. He was a gaunt figure, pens and pencils in the pocket of his faded plaid shirt, and baggy flannel trousers held up by an ancient US army canvas belt.
His wife came to greet us. Face carefully made-up, hair short and neatly combed, Gerda was still pretty in a severe spinsterish style. ‘Bernard dear! And Werner too. How nice to see you.’ She was a diminutive figure, especially when standing next to her tall husband. Gerda was German; very German. They met here in the ruins in 1945. At that time she was an opera singer and I can remember how, years later, she was still being stopped on the street by people who remembered her and wanted her autograph. That was a long time ago, and now her career was relegated to the history books, but even in her cheap little black dress she had some arcane magic that I could not define, and sometimes I could imagine her singing Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier the way she had that evening in 1943 when she brought the Staatsoper audience to its feet and became a star overnight.
‘We tried to phone,’ explained Werner apologetically.
‘You are looking well,’ said Gerda, studying Werner with great interest. ‘You look most distinguished.’ She looked at me. ‘You too, Bernard,’ she added politely, although I think my long hair and dirty clothes disturbed her. ‘Would you prefer tea or coffee?’ Gerda asked.
‘Or wine?’ said Lange.
‘Tea or coffee,’ I said hurriedly. Each harvest Gerda made enough plum wine to keep Lange going all year. I dread to think how much that must have been, for Lange drank it by the pint. It tasted like paint remover.
‘Plum wine,’ said Lange. ‘Gerda makes it.’
‘Do you really, Gerda?’ I said. ‘What a shame. Plum wine brings me out in spots.’
Lange scowled. Gerda said, ‘Lange drinks too much of it. It’s not good for him.’
‘He looks fit on it,’ I pointed out, and considering that this huge aggressive fellow was in his middle seventies, or beyond, was almost enough to convert me to Gerda’s jungle juice.
We sat down on the lumpy sofa while Mrs Koby went off to the kitchen to make some tea for us. Lange hovered over us. He’d not changed much since the last time I’d seen him. In fact he’d changed very little from the ferocious tyrant I’d worked for long long ago. He was a craggy man. I remember someone in the office saying that they’d rather tackle the north face of the Eiger than Lange in a bad mood, and Frank Harrington had replied that there was not much in it. Ever since then I’d thought of Lange as some dangerous piece of granite: sharp