Walter von Munte touched his stiff white collar. ‘I was never allowed to know any secrets. They gave me only what they thought I should have.’
I said, ‘Like Silas distributing his food and cigars, you mean?’ I kept wishing that Silas would depart and leave me and von Munte to have the conversation I wanted. But that was not Silas’s way. Information was his stock in trade, it always had been, and he knew how to use it to his own advantage. That’s why he’d survived so long in the Department.
‘Not as generously as Silas,’ said von Munte. He smiled and drank some of the Madeira and then shifted about, deciding how to explain it all. ‘The bank’s intelligence staff went over to the Warschauer Strasse office once a week. They would have all the new material in trays waiting for us. Old Mr Heine was in charge there. He’d produce for us each item according to subject.’
‘Raw?’ I said.
‘Raw?’ said von Munte. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Did they tell you what the agent said or did they merely tell you the content of his message?’
‘Oh, the messages were edited, but otherwise as received. They had to be; the staff handling the material didn’t know enough about economics to understand what it was about.’
‘But you identified different sourees?’ I asked yet again.
‘Sometimes we could, sometimes that was easy. Some of it was total rubbish.’
‘From different agents?’ I persisted. My God, but it was agony to deal with old people. Would I be like this one day?
‘Some of their agents sent only rumours. There was one who never provided a word of good sense. They called him “Grock”. That wasn’t his code name or his source name; it was our joke. We called him “Grock”, after the famous clown, of course.’
‘Yes,’ I said. But I’m glad von Munte had told me it was a joke; that gave me the cue to laugh. ‘What about the good sources?’ I said.
‘You could recognize them from the quality of their intelligence and from the style in which it was presented.’ He sat back in his chair. ‘Perhaps I should explain what it was like in the Warschauer Strasse office. It wasn’t our office. It is supposed to be an office belonging to Aeroflot, but there are always police and security guards on the door, and our passes were carefully scrutinized no matter how often we visited there. I don’t know who else uses the building, but the economic intelligence staff met there regularly, as I said.’
‘And you were included in “economic intelligence staff”?’
‘Certainly not. They were all KGB and security people. My superior was only invited to attend when there was something directly affecting our department. Other bank officials and Ministry people came according to what was to be discussed.’
‘Why didn’t the briefing take place at the KGB offices?’ I asked. Silas was sitting upright on his metal chair, his eyes closed as if he were dozing off to sleep.
‘The Warschauer Strasse office was – perhaps I should say is – used at arm’s length by the KGB. When some Party official or some exalted visitor has enough influence to be permitted to visit the KGB installation in Berlin, they are invariably taken to Warschauer Strasse rather than to Karlshorst.’
‘It’s used as a front?’ said Silas opening his eyes and blinking as if suddenly coming awake from a deep slumber.
‘They wouldn’t want visitors tramping through the offices where the real work was being done. And Warschauer Strasse has a kitchen and dining room where such dignitaries can be entertained. Also there is a small lecture hall where they can see slide shows and demonstration films and so on. We liked going over there. Even the coffee and sandwiches served were far better than anything available elsewhere.’
‘You said you could tell the source from the quality and the style. Could you enlarge on that?’ I asked.
‘Some communications would begin an item with a phrase such as “I hear that the Bank of England” or whatever. Others would say, “Last week the Treasury issued a confidential statement.” Others might put it, “Fears of an imminent drop in American interest rates are likely to bring …”. These different styles are virtually sufficient for identification, but correlated with the proved quality of certain sources, we were soon able to recognize the agents. We spoke of them as people and joked about the nonsense that certain of them sometimes passed on to us.’
‘So you must have recognized the first-class material that my wife was providing.’
Von Munte looked at me and then at Silas. Silas said, ‘Is this official, Bernard?’ There was a note of warning in his voice.
‘Not yet,’ I said.
‘We’re sailing a bit close to the wind for chitchat,’ Silas said. The choice of casual words, and the softness of his voice, did nothing to hide the authority behind what he said; on the contrary, it was the manner in which certain classes of Englishmen give orders to their subordinates. I said nothing and von Munte watched Silas carefully. Then Silas drew on his cigar reflectively and, having taken his time, said, ‘Tell him whatever you know, Walter.’
‘As I told you, I only saw the economic material. I can’t guess what proportion of any one agent’s submissions that might be.’ He looked at me. ‘Take the material from the man we called “Grock”. It was rubbish, as I said. But for all I know, Grock might have been sending wonderful stuff about underwater weaponry or secret NATO conferences.’
‘Looking back at it, can you now guess what my wife was sending?’
‘It’s only a guess,’ said von Munte, ‘but there was one tray of material that was always well written and organized in a manner one might call academic.’
‘Good stuff?’
‘Very reliable but inclined towards caution. Nothing very alarming or exciting; mostly confirmations of trends that we could guess at. Useful, of course, but from our point of view not wonderful.’ He looked up at the sky through the glass roof of the conservatory. ‘Eisenguss,’ he said suddenly and laughed. ‘Nicht Eisenfuss; Eisenguss. Not iron foot but cast iron or pig iron; Gusseisen. Yes, that was the name of the source. I remember at the time I thought he must be some sort of government official.’
‘It means poured iron,’ said Silas, who spoke a perfect and pedantic German and couldn’t tolerate my Berlin accent.
‘I know the word,’ I said irritably. ‘The audiotypist was careless, that’s all. None of them are really fluent.’ It was a feeble excuse and quite untrue. I’d done it myself. I should have listened more carefully when I was with the Miller woman or picked up my mistranslation when typing from the tape recording.
‘So now we have a name to connect Fiona with the material she gave them,’ said Silas. ‘Is that what you wanted?’
I looked at von Munte. ‘Just the one code word for Fiona’s tray?’
‘It all came under the one identification,’ said von Munte. ‘Why would they split it up? It wouldn’t make sense, would it?’
‘No,’ I said. I finished my drink and stood up. ‘It wouldn’t make sense.’
Upstairs I could hear the children growing noisy. There was a limit to the amount of time that TV kept them entertained. ‘I’ll go and take charge of my children,’ I said. ‘I know they tire Mrs Porter.’
‘Are you staying for supper?’ said Silas.
‘Thanks, but it’s a long journey, Silas. And the children will be late to bed as it is.’
‘There’s plenty of room for you all.’
‘You’re very kind, but it would mean leaving at crack of dawn to get the children to school and