Charity. Len Deighton
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‘So it was Frank’s idea?’ Werner asked. Werner was an impressive piano player; I could see he was listening to the music with a critical ear.
‘It wasn’t anyone’s idea. Not the way you mean. The job was vacant; I came.’
Werner said: ‘Frank has managed without a deputy for ages. Don’t you need to be in London … somewhere near Fiona and the kids? How are they doing?’
‘They are still with Fiona’s parents. Private school with extra tutoring as needed, a pony for Sally and a mountain bicycle for Billy, evenings with Grandpa and plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Do? I can’t snatch them away from the bastard without providing something better, can I?’ I said, curbing my anger and frustration. The piano player suddenly ended his experimental tunes, stood up and shouted that the piano was no good at all. A disembodied voice shouted that there was no money to get another. The piano player shrugged, looked at us, shrugged again and then sat down and tried Gershwin.
‘Couldn’t they live in London with Fiona?’ said Werner.
‘It’s an apartment – not fifteen acres of rolling countryside … and Fiona works every hour God Almighty sends. How would we arrange things? I’d have them here if I could think of some feasible way of doing it.’ I looked down at my hands; I had clasped one fist so tight that a fingernail had cut my palm, and drawn blood.
Werner watched me and tried to cheer me up: ‘Well, you don’t have to be in Berlin for ever and I’m sure there’s plenty to do here.’
‘Enough. A Deputy Head of Station is on the establishment. I suppose Frank was afraid that if the position remained unfilled too long it would be abolished. Anyway it gives Frank a chance to disappear whenever he likes.’
‘But it ties you down.’
‘The theory is: I get one long weekend in London a month.’
‘You’ll have to fight for it,’ said Werner.
‘That’s why I’m going this weekend,’ I said.
Perhaps he was right to be sceptical. I could see that events were unlikely to make it possible for me to go across to London so regularly. With Frank’s frequent wanderings, I would be snatching a day or two as and when opportunities came along. ‘This weekend I go,’ I promised him again, and in doing so promised myself too. ‘I’m booked on the plane; I’m seeing the children. And if World War Three starts at Checkpoint Charlie, Frank will have to handle the opening moves all by himself.’
‘You don’t think London might have put you on the shelf? Put you here so you don’t get access to mainstream material?’
‘I handle everything going through here. You need top clearance for that.’
‘Except the secrets that Frank handles and keeps close to his chest.’
‘Not Frank,’ I said, but of course Werner was right. I’d not seen any of the signals about Prettyman, and the questions about moving him, and the complications that arose from his US passport, until I got to Moscow. Who knows if there were other signals expressing interest in my past friendship with Prettyman, or my sometimes indiscreetly voiced suspicions of his role in Tessa’s death.
‘Frank invited me for happy-hour and then read the Riot Act to me. It must have been prompted by London.’
Werner gave me a told-you-so stare.
‘Is London sniffing at me? Why me? Why now?’
‘Because you keep on about Tessa, that’s why. London have sidelined you.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘And this is just the beginning. They’ll get rid of you completely. Firing you in Berlin makes sure you can’t kick up the sort of fuss you’d be able to do if you were made redundant while working in London Central.’
‘Well I’m not going to just forget about Tessa.’
‘You said you had forgotten about it.’
‘When?’
‘You just told me.’
‘Don’t shout Werner, I’m not deaf.’
Slowly and with exaggerated pedantry Werner said: ‘You told Frank you were trying to put the Tessa death behind you. You said the whole business was getting you down. You told me that, Bernie, not half an hour ago.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t mean I was going to forget about it.’
‘What did you mean, Bernie?’
‘I mean I will put aside all my previous suspicions and ideas. I will start afresh. I’m going to look into Tessa’s death as if I’d come to it for the first time. I’m convinced that Bret Rensselaer is behind it all.’
‘Now it’s Bret. Why Bret? Bret was in California, wasn’t he?’
‘If I could get Bret in the right mood, I could get him to spill the beans. He’s not like the others.’
‘But what would Bret know?’
‘Bret had access to a big slice of the Department’s dough. It looked as if he’d embezzled it and some idiot tried to arrest him, remember?’
‘And you saved him. You saved Bret that time. I hope he remembers that episode when he came running to you in Berlin.’
‘He’s not likely to forget it. That shooting at the station changed Bret. They thought he would die. His hair went white and he was never the same again.’
‘But Bret didn’t steal any Departmental money?’
‘Bret was up front in a secret Departmental scheme to siphon money away. By koshering a few millions aside they covertly financed Fiona’s operations in the East.’
‘You told me.’
‘But Prettyman was on that committee too. He put some money into his own pocket. They sent me to Washington DC to bring Prettyman back but he wasn’t having any.’
‘That can’t be true, Bernie. Prettyman is a blue-eyed boy nowadays.’
‘He did a deal with them. I’d like to know what the deal was; but they bury these things deep. That’s why I would like to get Bret talking. Bret was on the committee with Prettyman. Bret was the one who planned Fiona’s defection. Bret would know everything that happened.’
‘My God, Bernie. You never give up, do you?’
‘Not without trying,’ I said.
‘Give up this one now. The people in London are not going to sit still while you light a fire under them.’
‘If no one there is guilty they have nothing to worry about.’
‘You sound very smug. If no one there is guilty, they will be even more furious, more angry, more vindictive to find that an employee is trying to hang a murder charge on them.’
‘If you are right, Werner. If you are right that they have sent me here as the first step in a plan to get rid of me, I have nothing to lose, do I?’
‘If you’d drop it, they might drop it too.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And everything in the garden would be lovely. But I’m going to find out who gave the orders to kill Tessa, and I’m going to find the one who gave the order to pull the trigger that night. I’ll face them with proof: depositions and any other kind of evidence I unearth. And well before they pull the carpet from under me, I’m going to have them dancing to the tune I play on my penny whistle.’
‘You are just angry. You are just angry that Dicky got the job you should have had. You are just inventing the cause for a vendetta.’