Spy Sinker

'Bret, my dear fellow. I do hope I didn't wake you.'

I'm reading a superb and moving book, Sir Henry.'

'As long as you're not in the middle of anything important,' said the D-G imperturbably. 'I know you are something of a night owl. Anyway this won't wait, I'm afraid.'

'I understand.' Bret put the book aside and closed it regretfully.

'Special Branch liaison came through to me at home a few minutes ago. Apparently a young woman, English by all accounts, walked into the police station in Chichester and said she wanted to talk to someone in our line of business.'

'Oh, yes, sir,' said Bret.

'You're yawning already, of course. Yes, we've seen a lot of those in our time, haven't we? But this lady says she wants to tell us something about one of our people in London. She's mentioned a man whose wife recently left him. Furthermore she met that wife recently in Berlin. You're still with me, are you Bret?'

'Very much with you, Sir Henry. Met her? By name? Mentioned her by name?'

'Apparently: but things usually become a bit vague by the time reports come word of mouth all the way to me. Very very urgent she said it was: someone was about to be killed: that kind of thing. But yes the name was given. Special Branch thought they should check to see if the name rang a bell with us. The night duty officer decided it was important enough to wake me up. I think he was right.'

'Yes, indeed, sir.'

'A Special Branch inspector is bringing this lady up to London. She gave her name as Mrs Miranda Keller, née Dobbs. No joy there of course, the German telephone books are full of Kellers. I wonder if you would be so kind as to talk to her? See what it's all about.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Special Branch have that estate agent's office in Kensington. The house behind the Sainsbury supermarket. You know it, I'm sure.'

'Yes, sir.'

'They will be there in under the hour.'

'I'll get going immediately, sir.'

'Would you really, Bret. I'd be so grateful. I'll be in the office tomorrow. We can talk about it then.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Of course it may be nothing at all. Nothing at all.'

'Well, I'd better hurry.'

'Or it could be our old pals getting up to naughty tricks. Don't take any chances, Bret.'

'I won't, sir. I'd better get started.'

'Yes, of course. Goodnight, old chap. Although for you I suppose it would be good morning.' The D-G chuckled and rang off. It was all right for him; he was going back to sleep.

Mrs Miranda Keller was thirty-six years old, and the wig she was wearing did not make her look younger. It was almost four o'clock in the morning and she'd endured a long car ride through the pouring rain to this grand old house in Kensington, a shabby residential part of central London. Miranda let her head rest back upon the frayed moquette of the armchair. Under the pitiless blue glare of the overhead lighting – which buzzed constantly – she did not look her best.

'As I told you, we have no one of that name working for us,' said Bret. He was behind a desk drinking stale black coffee from the delicate sort of china ware that is de rigueur in the offices of earnest young men who sell real estate. With it on the antique tray there was a bowl of sugar and a pierced tin of Carnation milk.

'S.A.M.S.O.N.,' she spelled it out.

'Yes, I know what you said. No one of that name,' said Bret.

'They are going to kill him,' said Miranda doggedly. 'Have you sent someone to the house in Bosham?'

'That's not something I'm permitted to discuss,' said Bret. 'Even if I knew,' he added.

'Well, these men will kill him if he goes there. I know the sort of men they are.' Wind rattled the windows.

'Russians, you say?'

'You wrote their names down,' she said. She picked up her cup, looked at the coffee, and set it aside.

'Of course I did. And you said there was another woman there too.'

'I don't know anything about her.'

'Ah, yes. That's what you said,' murmured Bret, looking down at his notes. 'My writing is not very elegant, Mrs Keller, but I think it is clear enough. I want you to read through the notes I've made. Start here: the conversation you had in the car at London airport, when you were imitating the voice of this woman you met in Berlin-Grunau.' He gave the sheet to her.

She read it quickly, nodded and offered it back. The wind made a roaring noise in the chimney and the electric fire rattled on its mounting. On the window there was the constant hammering of heavy rain.

Bret didn't take the papers from her. 'Take your time, Mrs Keller. Maybe read it twice.'

She looked at his notes again. 'What's wrong? Don't you believe me?'

'It sounds like a mighty banal conversation, Mrs Keller. Was it worth having you go to all that trouble, when in the final confrontation you simply say things about the children and about laying off this fellow Stinnes?'

'It was just to jolt him: so that he would follow the black girl to find his wife again.'

'Yes,' said Bret Rensselaer doubtfully. He took the sheets of notes and tapped them on the desk-top to get them tidy. Outside a car door slammed and an engine was started. A man yelled goodnight and a woman screamed 'Good riddance!': it was that kind of place.

'And I've asked for nothing.'

'I was wondering about that,' said Bret.

'There's no need to be sarcastic.'

'Forgive me. I didn't intend to be.'

'Could you switch off some of these lights? The glare is giving me a headache.'

'You said it! I hate fluorescent lighting but this place is used as an office. They are all on the same switch.'

'I want nothing for what I've told you. Nothing at all.'

'But?'

'But if you want me to go back there, it's only fair that I get something in return.'

'What do you have in mind?'

'A passport for my five-year-old son.'

'Ahhh!' said Bret in what was unmistakably a groan of agony as he envisaged the arguments that he would have to endure to get a passport for someone not entitled to one. Those professional obstructionists he dealt with in Whitehall would work overtime producing excuses to say no to that one.

'It will cost you nothing,' said Miranda.

'I know,' said Bret in a soft warm voice. 'It's a modest enough request, Mrs Keller. I'll probably be able to do it.'

'If I don't go to Rome tomorrow, or next day at the latest, I'll have a lot of explaining to do.'

'You're British. I would have thought that your son could claim British nationality.'

'I was born in Austria. My father was on a five-year contract there. My son was born in Berlin: I can't pass my citizenship on to him.'

'That's a lousy break,' said Bret. 'I'll do what I can.' He brightened as a sudden solution came to mind. Maybe a counterfeit passport would do: he wouldn't say it was counterfeit of course… 'I suppose any Western passport would serve to get him out of there: Irish Republic, Brazil, Guatemala, Belize or Paraguay.'

The woman looked at him suspiciously. 'Providing I got a certificated right to reside in Great Britain, but I don't want some Mickey Mouse passport that I have to renew every two or three years and bribe some embassy official every time I do it.'

Bret nodded assent. 'Do you have suitable photos of your son?'

' Yes.' From her handbag she took three passport pictures and passed them to him together with a piece of paper upon which she had written the other necessary description.

'So you had this planned before you left Berlin?'

'These Russian pigs are intolerable,' said Miranda. 'I always carry passport pictures.'

How enterprising, thought Bret. That's about all we can do right now,' he said. 'Leave it all with me. How can I contact you in East Berlin?'

'I'll need the passport,' said Miranda – 'Until I have the passport in my hand I'll do nothing for you.'

Bret looked at her. She was an intelligent woman. She must have realized that if she went back to the East she was delivering herself into his hands. But she gave no sign of that: she was one of those people who expected everyone to act fairly. It was good to know that such people still existed: Bret would not disabuse her at this stage. 'Would you accept a small payment?'