They gave me half an hour with Foegl in his cell but I was out of luck. His fear – which I'd hoped would be the mainspring of ready confession – had gone, after twenty years. The worst had come to him and he knew his life would end in a cell like this, so he had nothing more to fear. I doubted if even the fullest confession would count for an acquittal, but I tried the idea on him. He wouldn't budge. He seemed to have already faded away in a kind of death.
They had a lock-up for the Hertz VW at the Hotel Prinz Johah and I backed it in. Slush dripped from the wings and a puddle of water had formed on the concrete before I left it and went in to a late meal. Some of the staff stared at me a bit because they'd seen the papers, and the wine-waiter had a greyness about his face. He was past middle age, and as his slightly-shaking hand poured my wine I wondered where he'd been between '39 and '45, and what he'd done.
But the wine's flavour was unspoiled. After six months on a dungheap you don't notice the smell.
Most of the tables had been cleared by the time I was served with the coffee. The American drew a chair near and dropped his evening paper on to the table. I glanced down at my own face and up into his. He said with a pleasant smile:
"Seems we're sailing a little close to the wind, sir."
I didn't want to talk or even know him but there is sometimes a danger in not responding and the strict orders are to do so, at once.
"Catch it as it comes, and the closer the better."
So this would be Brand. A flat shrewd face with level grey eyes and a crew-cut. The smile was pleasant but I resented him and resented his cheeking me. If an agent decides to splash his pan all over the front page there is obviously a reason, and it's his own business. He goes to work his own way, on one condition: that he doesn't endanger secrecy. It had to be accepted that if I decided to draw enemy fire the only one to get hurt was me. Now that my face was being advertised I couldn't go within a mile of the Unter den Eichen and Rohner-allee intersection even if I were certain there was no tag. In starting out to expose myself to the adverse party deliberately I had implicitly cut myself off from Local Control except for Post and Bourse, the sole safe line of communication. I'd become, since this morning, a ‘hot operator,’ whom no one wanted to go near. It was a classic move, and KLJ had used it twice in his career, breaking the normal conditions of strict hush and meeting the enemy on open ground as the most expedient way of doing a particular job. It is dangerous for the agent and he knows it and settles for it. It is more dangerous for him if people don't keep clear of him, and it becomes dangerous for them. A hot operator must have no cover, no contacts, and must never go near Control. Even a radio is dangerous.
"How long are you staying?" I asked him uncivilly.
"Oh, I practically live here."
We both knew that in a place like this we had to con verse carefully, so that even if a tape-recording were made it wouldn't give anything away. There were columns and curtains in this room, and waiters were still on the move. The table could even be miked.
He offered me a small cigar but I shook my head. "I don't know this brand."
"I just thought I'd introduce it to you." He put the cigar-wallet away.
"I'm hot," I said, looking at the windows. He picked up his paper.
"You kid me not," he grinned quickly, glancing at the front-page picture. He tucked the paper under his arm. "Well, I'll leave you in peace. Always at your disposal, of course."
I watched him away, took ten minutes to finish my coffee, and went up to my room, changing into dry shoes and mentally listing all the good reasons against what I was going to do. Then I switched on to light music, a few minutes before time.
I used the hotel paper. Repeat: there is to be no cover. Hengel made contact. I don't like this. Brand has made contact and is staying here. I don't like this either. Repeat: am operating solo.
The music stopped.
I decided, through the first half of the report, not to finish the note yet.
Portuguese Canning: 388. Minus 1.
Py-Sulpha: 459.Plus 7.
Quota Freight: 793¾. Plus 10¾.
Rhone Electric: 625 -
I switched off. It read: ALL PRECAUTIONS. YOURSELF RED SECTOR.
I finished the note. If no confidence in my policy you have only to say so, and pull me out. Q.
People were making me too angry and that was bad because emotions clutter up clear thinking on a job. I'd let the Hengel boy off lightly, saying only that he'd made contact and not saying that he'd picked me up on his own initiative and then let me flush him within minutes. I didn't want Control to rap him, only to keep him out of my way. But it had made me angry. So had Brand, contacting me when he knew damned well I was a hot operator. Even if Control hadn't warned him, he should have known as soon as he saw my picture on the front page linked with a ‘lightning wave of arrests’. Now Control itself had made me angry. ‘All precautions’ – in other words I wasn't to risk endangering secrecy by these wildcat methods I was embarked on. ‘Yourself red sector’' – I was exposing myself to enemy fire.
Did I need telling?
Let them call my bluff and try to pull me out. They wouldn't succeed. I was out for Zossen. They'd given a dog a bone.
I took the VW as far as the Wilmersdorf district and posted the signal, locking the car and walking the rest of the way to her flat, angry, finally, with myself, because of all the good reasons I had mentally listed against going there again.
8: INGA
Within twenty-four hours they had me.
During this period there were small signs of their closing in, and I was content to wait for them.
It was midnight when I got back to the hotel from Inga's flat. She'd been on edge and had tried not to show it. The dog had been sent to bed: it had a kennel on the roof and went up by the fire-escape. She'd said ‘Friend’ and it went off without another look at me. Mostly we'd sat drinking and listening to things like Night Bounce that she put on the record-player for me, an eerie tune that suited her personality, lean, brooding, and cynical. She wore an all-black after-ski outfit more like a skin-tight track-suit with the top slit to the waist and a thonged belt. Nudity would have been less explicit.
I didn't alter my identity: I was still with the Red Cross tracing relatives of refugees. She mentioned Phoenix twice, during one of her bitter reminiscences, and spoke of Rothstein. I hooked his name immediately because I hadn't known he was in Berlin. If there were a chance, I would look him up.
Sometimes, watching her, I wondered: what sex are you? She must have known that she was getting under my skin, by all the things we didn't say. There was a rapport between us that made long silences unembarrassing even when the music wasn't playing and the room was totally silent. Tonight she smiled sometimes, and not altogether cynically. Lean, black, leather-belted and athletic-looking, gold hair thick along her arms: she might be anything. Lesbian, narcissist, sado-masochist, necrophile, any or all, and nothing for me, which was why I was here, a nihilist.