‘Not too near the Sektor boundary and within a mile of the Soviet Zone. Things can heat up very quickly in this burg, especially if you grab someone hot. Sometimes we prefer to put our cargo on ice in the zone somewhere. Anywhere from Lübeck to Leipzig.’ Spectacles had a smooth American accent and here and there it came through his lucid Rhineland German.
‘We will need at least forty-eight hours’ notice,’ said Spectacles. ‘But after that we will be responsible even if we take longer to actually do the movement. Do you have any questions?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What’s the procedure if I want to contact your people and I am in the East?’
‘You phone a Dresden number and they will give you an East Berlin number. It changes every week. The Dresden number changes sometimes too. Check with us before you go over.’
‘OK but does anyone have phones going across the city of Berlin?’
‘Officially one. It connects the Russian Command in Karlshorst with the Allied Command in the Stadion here in West Berlin.’
‘Unofficially?’
‘There have to be lines. The water, electricity, sewage and gas authorities all have lines to speak to their opposite number in the other half of the city. There could be an emergency but they are not officially recognized.’
‘And you don’t ever use these lines?’
‘Very seldom.’ There was a buzz. He flipped a switch on his desk. I heard the voice of the calm young man say, ‘Yes. Good evening,’ and another voice. ‘I’m the man you were expecting from Dresden.’ Spectacles clicked another switch and the TV screen flashed blue. I could see the waiting room as a short man entered it and I saw him enter the brightly lit cupboard. Spectacles swung the TV receiver around so that I couldn’t see it.
‘Security,’ he said. ‘It wouldn’t give you much confidence if we let you penetrate another operation, would it?’
‘You’re damn right it wouldn’t,’ I said.
‘So if that’s all,’ said Spectacles, closing a big ledger with a snap.
‘Yes,’ I said. I could take a hint.
He said, ‘You will act as Vulkan’s case officer4 for this operation. His code name is “King”. Your code name will be …’ he looked down at his desk. ‘… Kadaver.’
‘Corpse,’ I said. ‘That’s very chummy.’
Spectacles smiled.
I thought about ‘King’ Vulkan when I got back to the Frühling. I was surprised that he was one of the best chess players in Berlin but he was full of surprises. I thought about my code name – Kadaver – and about Kadavergehorsam, which is the sort of discipline which makes a corpse jump up and salute. I poured a Teacher’s and stared down at the screaming shining lights. I had begun to get the feel of the town; both sides of the wall had wide well-lit streets separated by inky lakes of darkness. Perhaps this was the only city in the world where you were safer in the dark.
1 Feldherrnhügel: the mound upon which the commanding generals stood to direct the battle.
2 Later the BND or Federal German Intelligence Service, but still generally referred to as the ‘Gehlen Bureau’. See Appendix 2.
3 Deutsche Demokratische Republik.
4 Case officer: In the American system of espionage (from which the Gehlen Bureau had borrowed the term) the case officer is the go-between connecting Washington to the agent in the field. He is generally empowered to vary slightly the aims and objects of the operation and always controls payment. In the case of the above operation I did not act as Vulkan’s case officer in the strict sense of the term, since a case officer keeps well concealed and does not reveal himself to other units.
Skilful use of knights is the mark of the professional player.
Tuesday, October 8th
Examine closely the eyes of certain bold young men and you’ll see a frightened little man staring anxiously out. Sometimes I saw him in Vulkan’s eyes and at other times I wasn’t so sure about it. He carried himself like an advert for hormone pills; his muscles rippled under well-cut lightweight wool suits. His socks were silk and his shoes were made on a personal last by a shop in Jermyn Street. Vulkan was the new breed of European man: he spoke like an American, ate like a German, dressed like an Italian and paid tax like a Frenchman.
He used all the Anglo-Saxon idioms with consummate skill and when he swore did it with calm and considered timing and never with frustration or rage. His Cadillac Eldorado was a part of him; it was black with real leather upholstery, and the wooden steering wheel, map-reading lights, hi-fi, air conditioning and radio phone were unobtrusive, but not so unobtrusive that you could fail to notice them. There were no woolly tigers or plastic skeletons, no pennants or leopard-skin seat-covers in Vulkan’s car. You could scrape the surface of Johnnie Vulkan however you liked; he was gold as deep as you cared to go.
The commissionaire at the Hilton saluted and said, ‘Shall I park the Strassenkreuzer, sir?’ He spoke English and, although the term street-cruiser is an uncomplimentary word for American cars, Johnnie liked it. He flipped him the car keys with a practised movement of the fingers. Johnnie walked ahead of me. The tiny metal studs that he affected in his shoes made a rhythm of clicks across the marble. The discreetly shaded light fell across the carefully oiled rubber-plants and shone on the Trinkgeld of the girl in the newspaper stand where they sold yesterday’s Daily Mail and Playboy and coloured postcards of the wall that you could send to friends and say, ‘Wish you were here’. I followed Vulkan into the bar where it was too dark to read the price-list and the piano player felt his way among the black and white keys like someone had changed them all around.
‘Glad you came?’ Vulkan said.
I wasn’t sure I was. Vulkan had changed almost as much as the city itself. Both found themselves in a permanent state of emergency and had discovered a way of living with it.
‘It’s great,’ I said.
Johnnie sniffed at his bourbon and downed it like it was medicine. ‘But you thought it would be different by now,’ he said. ‘You thought it would all be peacetime, eh?’
‘It’s too damn peacetime for my liking,’ I said. ‘It’s too damn “sundowners on the veranda” and “those infernal drums, Carruthers”. There are too many soldiers being Brahmins.’
‘And too many German civilians being untouchables.’
‘I was in the Lighthouse cinema in Calcutta once,’ I said. ‘They were showing Four Feathers. When the film came to that section when the beleaguered garrison could hold out no longer, across the horizon came a few dozen topees piping “Over the seas to Skye”, some short-muzzle Lee Enfields saying, “Cor blimey”, and some gay young sahibs with punkah wallahs in attendance.’
‘They put the tribesmen to flight,’ said Vulkan.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but in the cinema the Indian audience cheered as they did it.’
‘You think we are cheering on our Allied masters?’
‘You