TWILIGHT AT THE TOWERS
THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF Mironenko which Ballard had been shown in Munich had proved far from instructive. Only one or two pictured the KGB man full face; and of the others most were blurred and grainy, betraying their furtive origins. Ballard was not overmuch concerned. He knew from long and occasionally bitter experience that the eye was all too ready to be deceived; but there were other faculties - the remnants of senses modern life had rendered obsolete - which he had learned to call into play, enabling him to sniff out the least signs of betrayal. These were the talents he would use when he met with Mironenko. With them, he would root the truth from the man.
The truth? Therein lay the conundrum of course, for in this context wasn't sincerity a movable feast? Sergei Zakharovich Mironenko had been a Section Leader in Directorate S of the KGB for eleven years, with access to the most privileged information on the dispersal of Soviet Illegals in the West. In the recent weeks, however, he had made his disenchantment with his present masters, and his consequent desire to defect, known to the British Security Service. In return for the elaborate efforts which would have to be made on his behalf he had volunteered to act as an agent within the KGB for a period of three months, after which time he would be taken into the bosom of democracy and hidden where his vengeful overlords would never find him. It had fallen to Ballard to meet the Russian face to face, in the hope of establishing whether Mironenko's disaffection from his ideology was real or faked. The answer would not be found on Mironenko's lips, Ballard knew, but in some behavioural nuance which only instinct would comprehend.
Time was when Ballard would have found the puzzle fascinating; that his every waking thought would have circled on the unravelling ahead. But such commitment had belonged to a man convinced his actions had some significant effect upon the world. He was wiser now. The agents of East and West went about their secret works year in, year out. They plotted; they connived; occasionally (though rarely) they shed blood. There were debacles and trade-offs and minor tactical victories. But in the end things were much the same as ever.
This city, for instance. Ballard had first come to Berlin in April of 1969. He'd been twenty-nine, fresh from years of intensive training, and ready to live a little. But he had not felt easy here. He found the city charmless; often bleak. It had taken Odell, his colleague for those first two years, to prove that Berlin was worthy of his affections, and once Ballard fell he was lost for life. Now he felt more at home in this divided city than he ever had in London. Its unease, its failed idealism, and - perhaps most acutely of all - its terrible isolation, matched his. He and it, maintaining a presence in a wasteland of dead ambition.
He found Mironenko at the Germalde Galerie, and yes, the photographs had lied. The Russian looked older than his forty-six years, and sicker than he'd appeared in those filched portraits. Neither man made any sign of acknowledgement. They idled through the collection for a full half-hour, with Mironenko showing acute, and apparently genuine, interest in the work on view. Only when both men were satisfied that they were not being watched did the Russian quit the building and lead Ballard into the polite suburbs of Dahlem to a mutually agreed safe house. There, in a small and unheated kitchen, they sat down and talked.
Mironenko's command of English was uncertain, or at least appeared so, though Ballard had the impression that his struggles for sense were as much tactical as giammatical. He might well have presented the same facade in the Russian's situation; it seldom hurt to appear less competent than one was. But despite the difficulties he had in expressing himself, Mironenko's avowals were unequivocal.
'I am no longer a Communist,' he stated plainly, 'I have not been a party-member - not here -' he put his fist to his chest'- for many years.'
He fetched an off-white handkerchief from his coat pocket, pulled off one of his gloves, and plucked a bottle of tablets from the folds of the handkerchief.
'Forgive me,' he said as he shook tablets from the bottle. 'I have pains. In my head; in my hands.'
Ballard waited until he had swallowed the medication before asking him, 'Why did you begin to doubt?'
The Russian pocketed the bottle and the handker- chief, his wide face devoid of expression.
'How does a man lose his ... his faith?' he said. 'Is it that I saw too much; or too little, perhaps?'
He looked at Ballard's face to see if his hesitant words had made sense. Finding no comprehension there he tried again.
'I think the man who does not believe he is lost, is lost.'
The paradox was elegantly put; Ballard's suspicion as to Mironenko's true command of English was confirmed.
'Are you lost nozi>?' Ballard inquired.
Mironenko didn't reply. He was pulling his other glove off and staring at his hands. The pills he had swallowed did not seem to be easing the ache he had complained of. He fisted and unfisted his hands like an arthritis sufferer testing the advance of his condition. Not looking up, he said:
'I was taught that the Party had solutions to everything. That made me free from fear.'
'And now?'
'Now?' he said. 'Now I have strange thoughts. They come to me from nowhere ...'
'Go on,' said Ballard.
Mironenko made a tight smile. 'You must know me inside out, yes? Even what I dream?'
'Yes,' said Ballard.
Mironenko nodded. 'It would be the same with us,' he said. Then, after a pause: 'I've thought sometimes I would break open. Do you understand what I say? I would crack, because there is such rage inside me. And that makes me afraid, Ballard. I think they will see how much I hate them.' He looked up at his interrogator. 'You must be quick,' he said, 'or they will discover me. I try not to think of what they will do.' Again, he paused. All trace of the smile, however humourless, had gone. 'The Directorate has Sections even I don't have knowledge of. Special hospitals, where nobody can go. They have ways to break a man's soul in pieces.'
Ballard, ever the pragmatist, wondered if Mironenko's vocabulary wasn't rather high-flown. In the hands of the KGB he doubted if he would be thinking of his soul's contentment. After all, it was the body that had the nerve-endings.
They talked for an hour or more, the conversation moving back and forth between politics and personal reminiscence, between trivia and confessional. At the end of the meeting Ballard was in no doubt as to Mironenko's antipathy to his masters. He was, as he had said, a man without faith.
The following day Ballard met with Cripps in the restaurant at the Schweizerhof Hotel, and made his verbal report on Mironenko.
'He's ready and waiting. But he insists we be quick about making up our minds.'
'I'm sure he does,' Cripps said. His glass eye was troubling him today; the chilly air, he explained, made it sluggish. It moved fractionally more slowly than his real eye, and on occasion Cripps had to nudge it with his fingertip to get it moving.
'We're not going to rushed into any decision,' Cripps said.
'Where's the problem? I don't have any doubt about his commitment; or his desperation.'
'So you said,' Cripps replied. 'Would you like something for dessert?'
'Do you doubt my appraisal? Is that what it is?'
'Have something sweet to finish off, so that I don't feel an utter reprobate.'