"Spy Sinker" - читать интересную книгу автора (Deighton Len)16It was two o'clock in the morning. Bret was in his Thameside house, sitting up in bed reading the final few pages of Zola's 'Bret, my dear fellow. I do hope I didn't wake you.' I'm reading a superb and moving book, Sir Henry.' 'As long as you're not in the middle of anything important,' said the D-G imperturbably. 'I know you are something of a night owl. Anyway this won't wait, I'm afraid.' 'I understand.' Bret put the book aside and closed it regretfully. 'Special Branch liaison came through to me at home a few minutes ago. Apparently a young woman, English by all accounts, walked into the police station in Chichester and said she wanted to talk to someone in our line of business.' 'Oh, yes, sir,' said Bret. 'You're yawning already, of course. Yes, we've seen a lot of those in our time, haven't we? But this lady says she wants to tell us something about one of our people in London. She's mentioned a man whose wife recently left him. Furthermore she met that wife recently in Berlin. You're still with me, are you Bret?' 'Very much with you, Sir Henry. Met her? By name? Mentioned her by name?' 'Apparently: but things usually become a bit vague by the time reports come word of mouth all the way to me. Very very urgent she said it was: someone was about to be killed: that kind of thing. But yes the name was given. Special Branch thought they should check to see if the name rang a bell with us. The night duty officer decided it was important enough to wake me up. I think he was right.' 'Yes, indeed, sir.' 'A Special Branch inspector is bringing this lady up to London. She gave her name as Mrs Miranda Keller, née Dobbs. No joy there of course, the German telephone books are full of Kellers. I wonder if you would be so kind as to talk to her? See what it's all about.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Special Branch have that estate agent's office in Kensington. The house behind the Sainsbury supermarket. You know it, I'm sure.' 'Yes, sir.' 'They will be there in under the hour.' 'I'll get going immediately, sir.' 'Would you really, Bret. I'd be so grateful. I'll be in the office tomorrow. We can talk about it then.' 'Yes, sir.' 'Of course it may be nothing at all. Nothing at all.' 'Well, I'd better hurry.' 'Or it could be our old pals getting up to naughty tricks. Don't take any chances, Bret.' 'I won't, sir. I'd better get started.' 'Yes, of course. Goodnight, old chap. Although for you I suppose it would be good morning.' The D-G chuckled and rang off. It was all right for him; he was going back to sleep. Mrs Miranda Keller was thirty-six years old, and the wig she was wearing did not make her look younger. It was almost four o'clock in the morning and she'd endured a long car ride through the pouring rain to this grand old house in Kensington, a shabby residential part of central London. Miranda let her head rest back upon the frayed moquette of the armchair. Under the pitiless blue glare of the overhead lighting – which buzzed constantly – she did not look her best. 'As I told you, we have no one of that name working for us,' said Bret. He was behind a desk drinking stale black coffee from the delicate sort of china ware that is de rigueur in the offices of earnest young men who sell real estate. With it on the antique tray there was a bowl of sugar and a pierced tin of Carnation milk. 'S.A.M.S.O.N.,' she spelled it out. 'Yes, I know what you said. No one of that name,' said Bret. 'They are going to kill him,' said Miranda doggedly. 'Have you sent someone to the house in Bosham?' 'That's not something I'm permitted to discuss,' said Bret. 'Even if I knew,' he added. 'Well, these men will kill him if he goes there. I know the sort of men they are.' Wind rattled the windows. 'Russians, you say?' 'You wrote their names down,' she said. She picked up her cup, looked at the coffee, and set it aside. 'Of course I did. And you said there was another woman there too.' 'I don't know anything about her.' 'Ah, yes. That's what you said,' murmured Bret, looking down at his notes. 'My writing is not very elegant, Mrs Keller, but I think it is clear enough. I want you to read through the notes I've made. Start here: the conversation you had in the car at London airport, when you were imitating the voice of this woman you met in Berlin-Grunau.' He gave the sheet to her. She read it quickly, nodded and offered it back. The wind made a roaring noise in the chimney and the electric fire rattled on its mounting. On the window there was the constant hammering of heavy rain. Bret didn't take the papers from her. 'Take your time, Mrs Keller. Maybe read it twice.' She looked at his notes again. 'What's wrong? Don't you believe me?' 'It sounds like a mighty banal conversation, Mrs Keller. Was it worth having you go to all that trouble, when in the final confrontation you simply say things about the children and about laying off this fellow Stinnes?' 'It was just to jolt him: so that he would follow the black girl to find his wife again.' 'Yes,' said Bret Rensselaer doubtfully. He took the sheets of notes and tapped them on the desk-top to get them tidy. Outside a car door slammed and an engine was started. A man yelled goodnight and a woman screamed 'Good riddance!': it was that kind of place. 'And I've asked for nothing.' 'I was wondering about that,' said Bret. 'There's no need to be sarcastic.' 'Forgive me. I didn't intend to be.' 'Could you switch off some of these lights? The glare is giving me a headache.' 'You said it! I hate fluorescent lighting but this place is used as an office. They are all on the same switch.' 'I want nothing for what I've told you. Nothing at all.' 'But?' 'But if you want me to go back there, it's only fair that I get something in return.' 'What do you have in mind?' 'A passport for my five-year-old son.' 'Ahhh!' said Bret in what was unmistakably a groan of agony as he envisaged the arguments that he would have to endure to get a passport for someone not entitled to one. Those professional obstructionists he dealt with in Whitehall would work overtime producing excuses to say no to that one. 'It will cost you nothing,' said Miranda. 'I know,' said Bret in a soft warm voice. 'It's a modest enough request, Mrs Keller. I'll probably be able to do it.' 'If I don't go to Rome tomorrow, or next day at the latest, I'll have a lot of explaining to do.' 'You're British. I would have thought that your son could claim British nationality.' 'I was born in Austria. My father was on a five-year contract there. My son was born in Berlin: I can't pass my citizenship on to him.' 'That's a lousy break,' said Bret. 'I'll do what I can.' He brightened as a sudden solution came to mind. Maybe a counterfeit passport would do: he wouldn't say it was counterfeit of course… 'I suppose any Western passport would serve to get him out of there: Irish Republic, Brazil, Guatemala, Belize or Paraguay.' The woman looked at him suspiciously. 'Providing I got a certificated right to reside in Great Britain, but I don't want some Mickey Mouse passport that I have to renew every two or three years and bribe some embassy official every time I do it.' Bret nodded assent. 'Do you have suitable photos of your son?' ' Yes.' From her handbag she took three passport pictures and passed them to him together with a piece of paper upon which she had written the other necessary description. 'So you had this planned before you left Berlin?' 'These Russian pigs are intolerable,' said Miranda. 'I always carry passport pictures.' How enterprising, thought Bret. That's about all we can do right now,' he said. 'Leave it all with me. How can I contact you in East Berlin?' 'I'll need the passport,' said Miranda – 'Until I have the passport in my hand I'll do nothing for you.' Bret looked at her. She was an intelligent woman. She must have realized that if she went back to the East she was delivering herself into his hands. But she gave no sign of that: she was one of those people who expected everyone to act fairly. It was good to know that such people still existed: Bret would not disabuse her at this stage. 'Would you accept a small payment?' 'I just want the passport for my son.' 'Okay, Mrs Keller. I'll do everything I can to get it for you.' 'I'm sure you will,' she said. 'One last, and vitally important thing, Mrs Keller. The woman you met in Berlin, Mrs Fiona Samson, is a KGB officer. She is a very smart woman. Don't underestimate her.' 'Are you saying she works for Russian intelligence?' 'Very much so. Mean, I should have said: a mean and dangerous woman. Under no circumstances should you confide anything to her.' 'No, I won't.' 'So it wasn't a complete waste of time, Bret?' The D-G was making one of his rare visits to Bret Rensselaer's magnificent monochrome office, He sat on the black leather chesterfield picking at the buttons and determined not to smoke. There were times when the D-G's distant joviality reminded Bret of Sassoon's World War One general: ' 'No, sir. Very instructive,' said Bret, who was sitting behind his glass-topped desk wearing a white shirt and spotted bow tie. 'It was a plan to kill Bernard Samson?' 'That is her story.' 'And this other young man was killed instead?' 'Yes, but she doesn't know that. And of course I didn't tell her.' 'Did Samson report being approached by this black girl?' 'No, sir, he did not.' Bret tidied the papers on his desk, although they didn't need tidying. 'And what else did the house in Bosham reveal? Have your chaps reported back to you?' 'I have done nothing about the house in Bosham, and I intend to do nothing.' After a deliberately audible intake of breath, the Director-General stared at him, thought about it, and finally said, 'Very prudent, Bret.' 'I'm glad you approve, Sir Henry.' 'Where is Samson?' 'Samson is alive and well.' 'You didn't warn him?' 'No sir. I sent him away on a job.' 'Yes, that was wise.' He sniffed. 'So they acted on Mrs Samson's information about the Bosham safe house. They were quick off the mark on that one. Ummm.' 'We come out of it very well, sir.' 'I wish you wouldn't keep saying that, Bret. We're not out of it yet. I don't like the fact that Samson didn't report back that approach. Do you think he believed it was his wife in the back of that car?' 'Yes, probably. But Samson thinks before he acts. All these ex-field people become ultra-cautious: that's why we have to retire them.' 'You'd better make sure Mrs Samson knows about this impersonation.' He sniffed. 'So Bernard Samson didn't report any of it. I don't like that, Bret.' 'No, sir, but there is no reason to think that Samson is in any way disloyal. Or contemplating disloyalty.' 'This Mrs Keller, is she a potential agent for us?' 'No, sir. Out of the question.' 'But we can use her?' 'I don't see how. Not at present anyway.' 'Did you get photos of her?' 'Yes, the Kensington office is good from that point of view. Lots of good clear pictures.' The D-G tapped his fingers on the leather arm of the chesterfield. 'On the matter of safe houses, Bret. When we agreed that Mrs Samson should reveal the existence of the Bosham safe house, I understood that it was to be kept under surveillance.' Bret pursed his lips, feeling that he was being admonished for something outside his frame of reference. He said, 'At present my hands are tied… but when it becomes safe to do so, disciplinary action will be taken.' 'I do hope so, Bret. But the scheme is to just wait until the housekeeping people go into the Bosham safe house on a routine check-up and find the body?' 'That's right, sir.' 'Good.' He produced an encouraging smile, albeit humourless. 'And now this KGB fellow Stinnes. Silas is pestering me about him. He says we mustn't let his approach grow cold.' 'I thought that might be what you wanted to talk about, sir,' said Bret, diving down into a document case. From it he brought a red cardboard file which he opened to display a concertina of that grey angular computer printout that the D-G found difficult to read. And then he found four 10 x 8 inch shiny photos of Stinnes. Reaching across he placed them on the glass-topped desk where the D-G could see them, but the D-G didn't crane his neck to look closely. The photos were arranged side by side with finicky care. It was so typical of Bret Rensselaer, with his boundless faith in charts, graphs, graphics and projections, that he should bring photos of this damned Russian out at this meeting as if that would help them towards a sound decision. 'Has he provided any evidence of good faith?' asked the D-G. 'He told Samson that Moscow have broken the new diplomatic code. That's why we did everything "by hand of messenger".' The D-G extended a finger and touched one of the photos as though it might have been impregnated with some contagious disease. 'You believe him?' 'You probably spoke with Silas Gaunt,' said Bret, who wanted to know the lie of the land before committing himself to an opinion. 'Silas has got a bee in his bonnet about this one. I was looking for a more sober assessment.' Bret did not want to say something that would afterwards be quoted against him. Slowly he said, 'If Stinnes and his offer to defect is a Moscow stunt…' The D-G finished the sentence for him. 'The way we have reacted will make those chaps in Moscow feel very good, eh Bret?' 'I try to disregard any personal feelings of triumph or disaster when making decisions of that sort, Sir Henry.' 'And quite right too.' 'If Stinnes is doing this on Moscow's orders, he'd be more likely to bring us some secret document that we'd be tempted to transmit verbatim, or at least in sequence.' 'So that they could compare it and break our code? Yes, I suppose so. So you think he's genuine?' 'Silas thinks it doesn't matter; Silas thinks we should work on him, and send him back believing what we want them to believe over there.' Bret waited for the reaction and was still ready to jump either way. But he could tell that the D-G was attracted by this idea. After a moment's pause for thought, the D-G said, 'I don't want you to discuss this with Silas for the time being.' 'Very well, Sir Henry.' 'And in course of time, separate Stinnes from Cruyer and Samson and everyone else. This is for you to do alone, Bret. One to one, you and Stinnes. We have to have one person who understands the whole game and all its minutiae and ramifications. One person is enough, and that person must be you.' Bret put the photos and the printout back into his case. The D-G made agitated movements that indicated he was about to terminate the meeting. 'Before I go, Bret, one aspect of this…' 'Yes?' 'Would you say that Bernard Samson has ever killed a man?' Bret was surprised, and for a moment he allowed it to show. 'I imagine he has, sir. In fact… well, I know… Yes, many times.' 'Exactly, Bret. And now we are subjecting nun to a considerable burden of anxiety, aren't we?' Bret nodded. 'A man like Samson might not have the resilience that you would be able to show in such circumstances. He might take things into his own hands.' 'I suppose he might.' Bret was doubtful. 'I saw Samson the other day. He's taking it badly.' 'Do you want me to give him sick leave, or a vacation?' 'Certainly not: that would be the worst thing you could do for the poor fellow. It would give him time to sit and think. I don't want him to sit and think, Bret.' 'Would you give me some idea of what…?' 'Suppose he came to the conclusion that his wife had betrayed him, and betrayed his country. That she'd abandoned his children and made a fool of him? Might he not then decide to do to her what he's done to so many others?' 'Kill her? But wait a minute, Sir Henry. In fact she hasn't done that, has she?' 'And that leads us on to another aspect of the horrible position that Samson now finds himself in.' The D-G heaved himself up out of the low seat. Bret got to his feet and watched but decided against offering him assistance. The D-G said, 'Samson is asking a lot of questions. Suppose he discovers the truth? Might it not seem to him that we have played a cruel prank on him? And done it with callous indifference? He discovers that we have not confided in him: he feels rejected and humiliated. He is a man trained to respond violently to his opponents. Might he not decide to wreak vengeance upon us?' 'I don't think so, Sir Henry. Samson is a civilized man.' Bret went across the office and held the door open for him. 'Is he?' said the D-G in that cheery way he could summon so readily. 'Then he hasn't been properly trained.' |
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