Treece, glancing at his watch, stood up. “Right, Commander. It’s all yours. Oh, and by the way,” he added, “in the meantime I’m starting on a detailed check on all the people aboard the coach, and this’ll be passed to you in Berlin if it’s ready by then. Failing that, you’ll get it from Jones in Moscow. Anything you want to ask at this stage?”
Shaw nodded towards the Cabinet Office memo on Treece’s desk. “They’ve hit one nail squarely on the head. Why, indeed, should dog kill dog?”
Treece shrugged. “It’s a habit among dogs, of course. Don’t ask me more than that! You’ll have to find that out. I admit it doesn’t add up on the surface, unless it’s a purely personal thing as I’ve suggested. You’ll have to dig. All right?”
Shaw said, “Yes, all right.” He tinned away and left the room, clattering down the uncarpeted wooden stairs, his face bleak. Treece had talked of a personal feud — Shaw didn’t believe that fully answered the big query. For very many reasons, he didn’t like this assignment at all. As he reached the street a flurry of wind blew scraps of paper against his legs and a chilly rain started to fall. In the distance was a low rumble of thunder. Somehow, the sudden change in the weather seemed like an omen.
Three
From a comfortable seat in the Superluxury coach, Shaw watched as the passengers filed aboard, his mind running for the hundredth time over his cover identity. Stephen Cane was a senior official in a civil department of the Ministry of Defence — Navy Accounts Division — and he was on his annual month’s holiday.
With his wife Ethel, and three year old daughter, May, he lived in a semi-detached villa in Twickenham; funds had not permitted him to bring his wife with him on the trip. Stephen Edward Jessop Cane — chosen (by Latymer, not Treece) because he resembled Shaw fairly closely — really existed and was being sent to a certain address in the north of Scotland, filled with praise for his forthcoming part in a matter of vital national importance, though he had not been briefed as to what the matter was. His wife firmly believed he was indeed on the Moscow trip, so Shaw was fully covered if the Russians should make any awkward enquiries along the way… Treece, it appeared, was an efficient fixer. The real Cane was a man of sudden whims and his wife had not been in the least surprised when he had announced his plans.
The Superluxury vehicle was a stupendous affair of crimson and cream and glittering chrome, driven by a large red-faced man called Tanner who came from Mile End. Shaw had felt that ten minutes chat with the driver the night before wouldn’t be time wasted; it had not. It had proved quite surprising how much a driver could pick up about his passengers in a short time. Tanner himself was a solid man, an ex-guardsman who would be a dependable character, handy to have around in a rough-house. Among other things he had explained, as had Major Pope — the distinguished-looking gray-haired courier in charge of the party — that the passengers changed seats daily to give everyone a fair share of the good views. Shaw hoped he would draw the American girl, Virginia MacKinlay, but no such luck. When he went aboard to his seat near the back of the coach, he found that for the first day he was to be stable-mates with a Miss Absolom, a middle-aged lady of extreme girth who overlapped atrociously into his share of the double seat.
The coach moved away from the forecourt of the Hotel von Hindenburg and into West Berlin’s traffic towards the checkpoint in the Russian sector, one of a stream of vehicles of all kinds and sizes heading east. The hot sunlight of early summer beamed down through the open roof. This, Shaw thought comfortably, was the way to do things… in luxury, and with someone else making all the arrangements. He hadn’t even to bother with his own passport; Pope had that with all the others in a briefcase which he kept beside him in his seat next to the driver. Shaw, who had not yet had the details of Treece’s promised security check on the tourists, concentrated on the passengers, looking for signs of nerves as they neared the Eastern zone, but he couldn’t detect anything at all beyond the normally heightened tension of persons crossing Iron Curtain frontiers. A touch of the shakes was only to be expected, even on holiday.
A little later, the coach slid to a halt at the East Berlin checkpoint. Armed East German guards and security men clambered aboard to pass the vehicle itself and its passengers through the Curtain. One of the security officials went carefully through the passports, meticulously comparing the photographs with their owners, giving each a long, hard stare from oddly hostile eyes, and asking searching questions meanwhile, like a human lie-detector. Shaw’s passport with its Russian visa was first class; it passed the scrutiny with flying colors. Treece knew his job.
Shaw had certainly expected no less, but even so he let out a long breath of relief when the security man nodded and passed on.
When the coach and baggage had been checked a signal was given and Tanner climbed into his seat. He let in the clutch and slowly the big vehicle moved ahead, out of the western sector, away horn freedom. Shaw glanced across the fat woman’s bosom and watched the guards slide away as the coach gathered speed. Here in East Berlin, the atmosphere had changed almost unbelievably, from one of extravagance and wealth and brittle gaiety, the forced gaiety of a city living under threat, to one of glum suspicion and hostility; it was the atmosphere of a city subdued by a secret terror, sunk into the apathy of its grim security. Not so bad, perhaps, as a few years earlier, but still bad enough to induce a feeling of unease. On the other side of the Wall, the side they had just left, faces smiled, girls were gaily dressed, and occasionally a friendly hand had waved at the English coach party as it had moved through the crowded streets. Here no hands waved and the crowds were depressed; this was more like a northern British shipyard town than the cosmopolitan capital city which it once had been. Each picture, East and West of the wall, was perhaps an equally false presentation of what lay behind in the two halves of Germany; but Berlin itself was unique, a border city facing two ways at once. On both sides of the Wall Berliners lived in tension of one sort or another…
The seat-backs in the coach were high. From the rear, Shaw could see nothing of his fellow-passengers; only the fat woman, whose gross asthmatic wheezings now rasped in his ear, and the couple in the corresponding seat across the gangway. A Mr and Mrs Williams from Lincoln, as he recalled from the previous night’s introductions. Tanner had said they seemed to be a perfectly ordinary elderly couple spending some of their savings on a lifetime’s ambition, and Shaw agreed with this; Williams was in any case too old to fit with Conroy. The party included eleven men, not counting Shaw himself, and four wives. The rest were single women, all of them, except Virginia MacKinlay, middle-aged and looking like secretaries or supervisory-grade clerks or sales-women; almost all of them had anxious-to-join-in expressions, and they laughed and talked vivaciously when the men were around. So far as they were concerned this could be a hunting expedition — though Shaw could think of a more romantic Mecca than Russia for that particular kind of trip.
Miss Absolom’s fruity voice came suddenly, cutting into his thoughts. “You were lucky to get your booking, Mr Cane.”
He murmured, “Other people’s misfortunes, so I’m told…”
“Yes. Poor woman. Such a nice little thing, and such a shock.”
“Of course. I’m very sorry.”
Miss Absolom pulled out some knitting and started to click irritatingly. Now he wouldn’t be able to talk even if he wanted to, in case she was counting… Shaw’s mind went back to his own problems. The displaced woman, the “nice little thing”, was going to get a very pleasant shock when she found her husband alive and well, and a young gentleman from the Foreign Office treating her like royalty; Shaw’s worries were much more urgent. Out of eleven men — thirteen if you counted Tanner and the courier — which was Ivan O’Shea Conroy? What did Conroy, the man he had come to kill, look like? Could the married men be disregarded, or had Conroy acquired a wife during the intervening years, the years when his file was blank; would he bring her along if he had — as a cover? Could be… Shaw sighed. As the coach left the outskirts of the city behind, he risked the counting and turned to his over-large companion. “Is this,” he asked politely, “your first visit to Russia, Miss Absolom?”