London Match. Len Deighton

trying to sell the soldiers their crackpot non-fraternization doctrine. Can you imagine me trying to write stories here while forbidden to talk to Germans? The Army fumed and threw kids into the stockade, but when you’ve got young German girls walking past the GIs patting their asses and shouting “Verboten”, even the Army brass began to see what a dumb idea it was.’

      ‘It was terrible in 1945 when I met Lange,’ said Gerda Koby. ‘My beautiful Berlin was unrecognizable. You’re too young to remember, Bernard. There were heaps of rubble as tall as the tenement blocks. There wasn’t one tree or bush left in the entire city; the Tiergarten was like a desert – everything that would burn had long since been cut down. The canals and waterways were all completely filled with rubble and ironwork, pushed there to clear a lane through the streets. The whole city stank with the dead; the stench from the canals was even worse.’

      It was uncharacteristic of her to speak so passionately. She came to a sudden stop as if embarrassed. Then she got up and poured coffee for me from a vacuum flask and poured a glass of wine for her husband. I think he’d had a few before I arrived.

      The coffee was in a delicate demitasse that contained no more than a mouthful. I swallowed it gratefully. I can’t get started in the morning until I’ve had some coffee.

      ‘Die Stunde Null,’ said Lange. ‘Germany’s hour zero – I didn’t need anyone to explain what that meant when I got here in 1945. Berlin looked like the end of the world had arrived.’ Lange scratched his head without disarranging his neatly combed hair. ‘And that’s the kind of chaos I had to work in. None of these Army guys, or the clowns who worked for the so-called Military Government, knew the city. Half of them couldn’t even speak the language. I’d been in Berlin right up until 1941 and I was able to renew all those old contacts. I set up the whole agent network that your dad ran into the East. He was smart, your dad, he knew I could deliver what I promised. He assigned me to work as his assistant and I told the Army where to stick their “War Correspondent” badge, pin and all.’ He laughed. ‘Jesus, but they were mad. They were mad at me and mad at your dad. The US Army complained to Eisenhower’s intelligence. But your dad had a direct line to Whitehall and that trumped their ace.’

      ‘Why did you go to Hamburg?’ I said.

      ‘I’d been here too long.’ He drank some of the bright red wine.

      ‘How long after that did Bret Rensselaer do his “fact-finding mission”?’ I asked.

      ‘Don’t mention that bastard to me. Bret was just a kid when he came out here trying to “rationalize the administration”.’ Lange put heavy sarcastic emphasis on the last three words. ‘He was the best pal the Kremlin ever had, and I’ll give you that in writing any time.’

      ‘Was he?’ I said.

      ‘Go to the archives and look … or better still, go to the “yellow submarine”.’ He smiled and studied my face to see if I was surprised at the extent of his knowledge. ‘The yellow submarine – that’s what I hear they call the big London Central computer.’

      ‘I don’t know …’

      ‘Sure, sure,’ said Lange. ‘I know, you’re not in the Department any more; you’re over here to conduct a concert of Christmas carols for the British garrison.’

      ‘What did Bret Rensselaer do?’

      ‘Do? He dismantled three networks that I was running into the Russian Zone. Everything was going smoothly until he arrived. He put a spanner into the works and eventually got London to pack me off to Hamburg.’

      ‘What was his explanation?’ I persisted.

      ‘Bret didn’t provide any explanations. You know him better than that. No one could stop him. Bret was only on temporary attachment to us at that time, but he’d been given some piece of paper in London Central that said he could do anything.’

      ‘And what did my father do?’

      ‘Your father wasn’t here. They got him out of the way before Bret arrived. I had no one to appeal to; that was part of the setup.’

      ‘Setup? Were you set up?’ I said.

      ‘Sure I was set up. Bret was going out to get me. Mine was the only desk in Berlin that was getting good material from the Russians. Jesus. I had a guy in Karlshorst who was bringing me day-to-day material from the Russian commandant’s office. You can’t do better than that.’

      ‘And he was stopped?’

      ‘He was one of the first we lost. I went across to the US Army to offer them what I had left, but Bret had already been there. I got the cold shoulder. I had no friends there because of the showdown I’d had with them during the early days. So I went to Hamburg just as London Central wanted.’

      ‘But you didn’t stay.’

      ‘In Hamburg? No, I didn’t stay in Hamburg. Berlin is my town, mister. I just went to Hamburg long enough to work my way through my resignation and then I got out. Bret Rensselaer had got what he wanted.’

      ‘What was that?’

      ‘He’d showed us what a big shot he was. He’d denazified the Berlin office and wrecked our best networks. “Denazified”, that’s what he called it. Who the hell did he think we could find who would risk their necks prying secrets from the Russkies – Socialists, Communists, left-wing liberals? We had to use ex-Nazis; they were the only pros we had. By the time your dad came back and tried to pick up the pieces, Bret was reading philosophy at some fancy college. Your dad wanted me to work with him again. But I said, “No dice.” I didn’t want to work for London Central, not if I was going to be looking over my shoulder in case Bret came back to breathe fire all over me again. No, sir.’

      ‘It was my fault, Bernard,’ said Mrs Koby. Again she spoke my name as if it was unfamiliar to her. Perhaps she always felt self-conscious as a German amongst Lange’s American and British friends.

      ‘No, no, no,’ said Lange.

      ‘It was my brother,’ she persisted. ‘He came back from the war so sick. He was injured in Hungary just before the end. He had nowhere to go. Lange let him stay with us.’

      ‘Nah!’ said Lange angrily. ‘It was nothing to do with Stefan.’

      ‘Stefan was a wonderful boy.’ She said it with heartfelt earnestness as if she was pleading for him.

      ‘Stefan was a bastard,’ said Lange.

      ‘You didn’t know him until afterwards … It was the pain, the constant pain that made him so ill-natured. But before he went off to the war he was a kind and gentle boy. Hitler destroyed him.’

      ‘Oh, sure, blame Hitler,’ said Lange. ‘That’s the style nowadays. Everything was Hitler’s fault. How would Germans manage without the Nazis to blame everything on?’