Karen provided a wealth of detail about the man, and behind the music of her monologue, it was Benyon's job to see if he could detect gins, traps, or snares being laid for his agent. Equally he listened for sounds that might tell him if there were other facts lying just beneath the surface of what she was telling him. Mainly he weighed what advantage they might make of this man should he tell Brutus to go forward, against the possible problems such an operation could cause. He also experienced the constant paranoia of the case officer-had his agent already been quietly turned?
He took his time, keeping the conversation on other matters, ignoring her prods and coaxing for an answer to her main problem-should she commit herself to Desnikoff and the information that would undoubtedly follow? Or should she give the colonel the brush-off?
Benyon, with only one part of his brain on her question, went through the standard drill. Had she detected any changes in attitude to her? Was she comfortable in the double role she was forced to play? Was she aware of any sudden rivalries that might cause her future chaos? These basic questions were important, as they gave him time to think through the right way to determine if Karen was being totally honest with him.
Finally he could put off the subject no longer.
"You fancy the colonel?" Watch her eyes and hands. Read the body language.
There was nothing to read as she shrugged. "He's a bit of a pig, actually. Not unattractive, but his manners are a little boorish."
"I have to ask you this. Even though he's boorish, are you in love with him?"
She gave a little laugh. "No way. That's an absurd thought."
"But you're willing to sleep with him, feign love for him?" "Isn't that part of the job? I know what I can get from him with pillow talk. The information he carries in his head is state-of-the-art stuff. He has the ear of the chairman of the KGB. He swaps information with the Stasi and the other heads of Intelligence. I can tap in to that stuff, but there's only one way, and that lies through sexual favors."
"The giving of favors is not your job. We train people in the art of seduction, Karen. It's not part of your brief. Now, are you sure you don't fancy him?"
She smiled, looked into his eyes, held the gaze for a moment, and then dropped her head. One hand reached out and brushed his hand. In a small voice she said, "Not like I fancy some people."
The meaning was perfectly clear to Benyon. She was telling him that she cared for him, and his mind and body reacted in diametrically opposed ways. It had been some time now since he had been with a woman and he felt the hot stirrings in his groin. Part of him rejected that wink of lust while another part yearned for a young woman as attractive as this one to hold him and tell him she loved him. It was at this moment, in a sudden quick flash, that he wondered if his emotions were motivated by a need for vengeance against his former wife. This he quickly dismissed as irrelevant.
The suspicious, professional side of his mind raised huge doubts. The wiles of women were myriad and complex. There was one of two reasons that Karen Schmidt, Brutus, might come on to him like this. One was what the psychiatrists call transference-where a patient begins to see the doctor as a love object. This same phenomenon was not uncommon among field agents and their case officers. The other reason was more ominous. To get her own way, a turned agent would stop at nothing to convince a case officer that she was right for a highly dubious job, and this included an act of seduction.
He thought-should she, shouldn't she? Will she, won't she? Will she join the dance? Aloud he asked her if she thought the colonel was on the level. "Is it, in your opinion, simply a bit of scalp hunting, or do you think he's serious?"
She thought for a moment. Then-"His reputation with the ladies is not good. I can only go by my intuition and that tells me he's being honest. Yes, he has a letch for me physically, but I sense it's more than that. He's talked to me about many things. It's a scatter effect, not just drawing a bead on my body. Behind all the boorish behavior, the crude manner, the man has a sensitive side. He's been trying to show me that."
"And you really think you can pull this off?"
"I'm not a virgin. I can fake with the best of them. My first priority is to get my hands-my brain, really-on information. If this is the only way to get the really good stuff, then I'll do it."
"You'll do it willingly?"
"I'll do it because I see it as part of my job. I can give you so much, Charles. Much more than I've been able to supply so far." Charles was Benyon's crypto. She knew him only by that name, and as far as he was aware, she was completely ignorant of his real name.
The telephone rang. Only one person knew the number. It would be Bridget Ransom telling him that the performance at the Berliner Ensemble was about to finish. At the distant end Bridget simply said, "Ten minutes," speaking in German just in case they had some kind of a check on the line.
He had to give Karen some instruction. A yes or a no. He counted to ten, then nodded his head. "Do it," he said, and thought he detected fear in her eyes. Fear and a kind of pleading. A woman who hoped the man would make some move; say that he cared, that he wanted her, or even touch her-fondle her after the ways of men and women who are intimately bound to each other.
Benyon did none of these things. "Do it," he said, then added, "I'll come over again in a few weeks-a couple of months if we're getting good information. I think we should talk after you've set the ball rolling, so to speak." He told her to give him at least ten minutes start before she left the little apartment, which smelled of wood rot, rising damp, and the antiseptic they used in safe houses in the East.
It took only three weeks for her first wedge of material to come in, sent as usual in a cryptic high-speed burst of electronic noise, caught in mid-air by the boys and girls at GCHQ in Cheltenham. GCHQ was Government Communications Headquarters, where they did everything from random frequency sweeps to twenty-four-hour listening, to recording reports sent at ultra-high speed from many places in the world.
Other reports followed and Benyon's senior officers in the SIS were more than pleased with the results. Brutus was sending them the pillow talk of Colonel Viktor Desnikoff and the pillow talk was exceptional. Things long hidden were now revealed, and on occasion, they were getting actual conversations between the KGB colonel and his masters in Moscow Center.
"Do we share any of this with the Americans?" Benyon's immediate superior asked of one of their policy-making deputy chiefs.
"Not on your life."
They knew when to share and when to keep quiet. What they were getting back from Brutus, while immediately useful, could also be kept in storage for exchange with the American service for some other secret. The heads of intelligence agencies can be like small boys at times, swapping information like kids swap cards.
Six weeks later, Benyon made another trip over the Wall and had a second face-to-face meeting with Karen Schmidt. This time she was more desirable than ever. She even hugged him and held him close for a good minute when they came together. More desirable, yes, but she was already showing the signs of strain.
When Benyon commented on it, she gave a rueful little smile and said something about maybe she had bitten off more than she could chew. "He's insatiable," she said. "But it opens his mouth."