A Small Town In Germany Read online

  Accounts of the incident by police, press and even delegates themselves were hopelessly confused. Some declared it was spontaneous; a collective gesture aggravated by the word 'British' which happened to be exhibited on the side of the library building. It was natural, they said, that as the day of decision in Brussels drew rapidly closer, the Movement's policy of opposition to the Common Market should assume a specifically anti-British form. Others swore they had seen a sign, a white handkerchief that fluttered from a window; one witness even claimed that a rocket had risen behind the town hall and emitted stars of red and gold. For some the crowd had surged with a positive impulse, for others it had 'flowed'; for others again it had trembled. 'It was led from the centre,' one senior police officer reported. 'The periphery was motion­less until the centre moved.' 'Those at the centre,' Western Radio maintained, 'kept their composure. The outrage was perpetrated bya few hooligans at the front. The others were then obliged to follow.' On one point only they seemed to agree: the incident had taken place when the music was loud­est. It was even suggested by a woman witness that the music itself had been the sign which started the crowd running.

  The Spiegel correspondent, on the other hand, speaking on Northern Radio, had a circumstantial account of how a grey omnibus chartered by a mysterious Herr Meyer of Luneburg conveyed 'a bodyguard of thirty picked men' to the town centre of Hanover one hour before the demonstration began and that this bodyguard, drawn partly from students and partly from young farmers, had formed a 'protective ring' round the Speaker's podium. It was these 'picked men' who had started the rush. The entire action had therefore been inspired by Karfeld himself. 'It is an open declaration,' he insisted, 'that from now on, the Movement proposes to march to its own music.'

  'This Eich,' Turner said at last. 'What's the latest?'

  'She's as well as can be expected.'

  'How well's that?'

  'That's all they said.'

  'Oh fine.'

  'Fortunately neither Eich nor the Library are a British res­ponsibility. The Library was founded during the Occupation but handed over to the Germans quite soon afterwards. It's not controlled and owned exclusively by the Land authority. There's nothing British about it.'

  'So they've burned their own books.'

  Shawn gave a startled smile.

  'Well yes, actually,' he said. 'Come to think of it, they have. That's rather a useful point; we might even suggest it to Press Section.'

  The telephone was ringing. Shawn lifted the receiver and listened.

  'It's Lumley,' he said, putting his hand over the mouthpiece. 'The porter told him you're in.'

  Turner appeared not to hear. He was studying another tele­gram; it was quite a short telegram, two paragraphs, not more; it was headed 'personal for Lumley' and marked 'immediate' and this was the second copy passed to Turner.

  'He wants you, Alan.' Shawn held out the receiver.

  Turner read the text once and then read it again. Rising, he went to the steel cupboard and drew out a small black notebook, unused, which he thrust into the recesses of his tropical suit.

  'You stupid bugger,' he said very quietly, from the door. 'Why don't you learn to read your telegrams? All the time you've been bleating about fire extinguishers we've had a bloody defector on our hands.'

  He held up the sheet of pink paper for Shawn to read.

  'A planned departure, that's what they call it. Forty-three files missing, not one of them below Confidential. One green classified Maximum and Limit, gone since Friday. I'll say it was planned.'

  Leaving Shawn with the telephone still in his hand, Turner thudded down the corridor in the direction of his master's room. His eyes were a swimmer's eyes, very pale, washed colourless by the sea.

  Shawn stared after him. That's what happens, he decided, when you open your doors to the other ranks. They leave their wives and children, use filthy language in the corridors and play ducks and drakes with all the common courtesies. With a sigh, he replaced the receiver, raised it again and dialled News Department. This was Shawn, he said, S-H-A-W-N. He had had rather a good idea about the riots in Hanover, the way one might play it at Press Conference: it was nothing to do with us after all, if the Germans decided to burn their own books... He thought that might go down pretty well as an example of cool English wit. Yes, Shawn, S-H-A-W-N. Not at all; they might even have lunch together some time.

  Lumley had a folder open before him and his old hand rested on it like a claw.

  'We know nothing about him. He's not even carded. As far as we're concerned, he doesn't exist. He hasn't even been vetted, let alone cleared. I had to scrounge his papers from Personnel.'

  'And?'

  'There's a smell, that's all. A foreign smell. Refugee back­ground, emigrated in the thirties. Farm School, Pioneer Corps, Bomb Disposal. He gravitated to Germany in forty-five. Tem­porary sergeant; Control Commission; one of the old carpet­baggers by the sound of it. Professional expatriate. There was one in every mess in Occupied Germany in those days. Some survived, some drifted into the consulates. Quite a few of them reverted; went into the night or took up German citizenship again. A few went crooked. No childhood, most of them, that's the trouble. Sorry,' Lumley said abruptly, and almost blushed.

  'Any form?'

  'Nothing to set the Thames on fire. We traced the next of kin. An uncle living in Hampstead: Otto Harting. Sometime adoptive father. No other relations living. He was in the phar­maceutical business. More an alchemist by the sound of it. Patent medicines, that kind of thing. He's dead now. Dead ten years. He was a member of the Hampstead Branch of the British Communist Party from forty-one to forty-five. One conviction for little girls.'

  'How little?'

  'Does it matter? His nephew Leo lived with him for a bit. Something may have rubbed off. The old man might even have recruited him then, I suppose... Long-term penetration. That would fit the mould. Or someone may have reminded him of it later on. They never let you go, mind, once you've had a taste of it. Bad as Catholics.'

  Lumley hated faith.

  'What's his access?'

  'Obscure. His function is listed as Claims and Consular, whatever that means. He has diplomatic rank, just. A Second Secretary. You know the kind of arrangement. Unpromotable, unpostable, unpensionable. Chancery gave him living space. Not a proper diplomat.'

  'Lucky bloke.'

  Lumley let that go.

  'Entertainment allowance' - Lumley glanced at the file - 'a hundred and four pounds per annum, to be spread over fifty cocktail guests and thirty-four dinner guests. Accountable. Pretty small beer. He's locally employed. A temporary, of course. He's been one for twenty years.'

  'That leaves me sixteen to go.'

  'In fifty-six he put in an application to marry a girl called Aickman. Margaret Aickman. Someone he'd met in the Army. The application was never pursued, apparently. There's no record of whether he's married since.'

  'Perhaps they've stopped asking. What are the missing files about?'

  Lumley hesitated. 'Just a hotchpotch,' he said casually, 'a general hotchpotch. Bradfield's trying to put a list together now.' They could hear the porter's radio blaring again in the corridor.

  Turner caught the tone and held on to it: 'What sort of hotchpotch?'

  'Policy,' Lumley retorted. 'Not your field at all.'

  'You mean I can't know?'

  'I mean you needn't know.' He said this quite casually; Lumley's world was dying and he wished no one ill. 'He's chosen a good moment, I must say,' he continued, 'with all this going on. Perhaps he just took a handful and ran for it.'

  'Discipline?'

  'Nothing much. He got in a fight five years ago in Cologne. A night-club brawl. They managed to hush it up.'

  'And they didn't sack him?'

  'We like to give people a second chance.' Lumley was still deep in the file, but his tone was pregnant with innuendo.

  He was sixty or more, coarse-spoken and grey; a grey-faced, grey-clothed owl of a man, hunched
and dried out. Long ago he had been Ambassador to somewhere small, but the appointment had not endured.

  'You're to cable me every day. Bradfield is arranging facili­ties. But don't ring me up, do you understand? That direct line is a menace.' He closed the folder. 'I've cleared it with Western Department, Bradfield's cleared it with the Ambassa­dor. They'll let you go on one condition.'

  'That's handsome of them.'

  'The Germans mustn't know. Not on any account. They mustn't know he's gone; they mustn't know we're looking for him; they mustn't know there's been a leak.'

  'What if he's compromised secret Nato material? That's as much their pigeon as ours.'

  'Decisions of that kind are none of your concern. Your instructions are to go gently. Don't lead with your chin. Understand?'

  Turner said nothing.

  'You're not to disturb, annoy or offend. They're walking on a knife edge out there; anything could tilt the balance. Now, tomorrow, any time. There's even a danger that the Huns might think we were playing a double game with the Russians. If that idea got about it could balls everything up.'

  'We seem to find it hard enough,' Turner said, borrowing from Lumley's vocabulary, 'playing a single game with the Huns.'

  'The Embassy have got one idea in their heads, and it's not Harting and it's not Karfeld and least of all is it you. It's Brussels. So just remember that. You'd better, because if you don't you'll be out on your arse.'

  'Why not send Shawn? He's tactful. Charm them all, he would.'

  Lumley pushed a memorandum across the desk. It con­tained a list of Harting's personal particulars. 'Because you'll find him and Shawn won't. Not that I admire you for that. You'd pull down the whole forest, you would, to find an acorn. What drives you? What are you looking for? Some bloody absolute. If there's one thing I really hate it's a cynic in search of God. Maybe a bit of failure is what you need.'

  'There's plenty of it about.'

  'Heard from your wife?'

  'No.'

  'You could forgive her, you know. It's been done before.'

  'Jesus, you take chances,' Turner breathed. 'What the hell do you know about my marriage?'

  'Nothing. That's why I'm qualified to give advice. I just wish you'd stop punishing us all for not being perfect.'

  'Anything else?'

  Lumley examined him like an old magistrate who had not many cases left.

  'Christ, you're quick to despise,' he said at last. 'You frighten me, I'll tell you that for nothing. You're going to have to start liking people soon, or it'll be too late. You'll need us, you know, before you die. Even if we are a second best.' He thrust a file into Turner's hand. 'Go on then. Find him. But don't think you're off the leash. I should take the midnight train if I were you. Get in at lunchtime.' His hooded yellow eyes flickered towards the sunlit park. 'Bonn's a foggy bloody place.'

  'I'll fly if it's all the same.'

  Lumley slowly shook his head.

  'You can't wait, can you. You can't wait to get your hands on him. Pawing the bloody earth, aren't you? Christ, I wish I had your enthusiasm.'

  'You had once.'

  'And get yourself a suit or something. Try and look as though you belong.'

  'I don't though, do I?'

  'All right,' said Lumley, not caring any more. 'Wear the cloth cap. Christ,' he added, 'I'd have thought your class was suffering from too much recognition already.'

  'There's something you haven't told me. Which do they want most: the man or the files?'

  'Ask Bradfield,' Lumley replied, avoiding his eye.

  Turner went to his room and dialled his wife's number. Her sister answered.

  'She's out,' she said.

  'You mean they're still in bed.'

  'What do you want?'

  'Tell her I'm leaving the country.'

  As he rang off he was again distracted by the sound of the porter's wireless. He had turned it on full and tuned it to the European network. A well-bred lady was giving a summary of the news. The Movement's next rally would be held in Bonn, she said; on Friday, five days from today.

  Turner grinned. It was a little like an invitation to tea. Pick­ing up his bag, he set off for Fulham, an area well known for boarding houses and married men in exile from their wives.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Decembers of Renewal

  De Lisle picked him up from the airport. He had a sports car that was a little too young for him and it rattled wildly on the wet cobble of the villages. Though it was quite a new car, the paintwork was already dulled by the chestnut gum of Godes­berg's wooded avenues. The time was nine in the morning but the street lights still burned. To either side, on flat fields, farm-houses and new building estates lay upon the strips of mist like hulks left over by the sea. Drops of rain prickled on the small windscreen.

  'We've booked you in at the Adler; I suppose that's all right. We didn't know quite what sort of subsistence you people get.'

  'What are the posters saying?'

  'Oh, we hardly read them any more. Reunification... alli­ance with Moscow... Anti-America... Anti-Britain.'

  'Nice to know we're still in the big league.'

  'You've hit a real Bonn day, I'm afraid. Sometimes the fog is a little colder,' de Lisle continued cheerfully, 'then we call it winter. Sometimes it's warmer, and that's summer. You know what they say about Bonn: either it rains or the level crossings are down. In fact, of course, both things happen at the same time. An island cut off by fog, that's us. It's a very metaphysical spot; the dreams have quite replaced reality. We live some­where between the recent future and the not so recent past. Not personally, if you know what I mean. Most of us feel we've been here for ever.'

  'Do you always get an escort?'

  The black Opellay thirty yards behind them. It was neither gaining nor losing ground. Two pale men sat in the front and the headlights were on.

  'They're protecting us. That's the theory. Perhaps you heard of our meeting with Siebkron?' They turned right and the Opel followed them. 'The Ambassador is quite furious. And now, of course, they can say it's all vindicated by Hanover: no Englishman is safe without a bodyguard. It's not our view at all. Still, perhaps after Friday we'll lose them again. How are things in London? I hear Steed-Asprey's got Lima.'

  'Yes, we're all thrilled about it.'

  A yellow road sign said six kilometres to Bonn.

  'I think we'll go round the city if you don't mind; there's liable to be rather a hold-up getting in and out. They're check­ing passes and things. '

  'I thought you said Karfeld didn't bother you.'

  'We all say that. It's part of our local religion. We're trained to regard Karfeld as an irritant, not an epidemic. You'll have to get used to that. I have a message for you from Bradfield, by the way. He's sorry not to have collected you himself, but he's been rather under pressure.'

  They swung sharply off the main road, bumped over a tram­line and sped along a narrow open lane. Occasionally a poster or photograph rose before them and darted away into the mist.

  'Was that the whole of Bradfield's message?'

  'There was the question of who knows what. He imagined you'd like to have that clear at once. Cover, is that what you'd call it?'

  'I might.'

  'Our friend's disappearance has been noticed in a general way,' de Lisle continued in the same amiable tone. 'That was inevitable. But fortunately Hanover intervened, and we've been able to mend a few fences. Officially, Rawley has sent him on compassionate leave. He's published no details; merely hinted at personal problems and left it at that. The Junior Staff can think what they like: nervous breakdown; family troubles; they can make up their own rumours. Bradfield men­tioned the matter at this morning's meeting: we're all backing him up. As for yourself...'

  'Well?'

  ' A general security check in view of the crisis? How would that sound to you? It seemed quite convincing to us.'

  'Did you know him?'

  'Harting?'

  'That'
s right. Did you know him?'

  'I think perhaps,' de Lisle said, pulling up at a traffic light, 'we ought to leave the first bite to Rawley, don't you? Tell me, what news of our little Lords of York?'

  'Who the hell are they?'

  'I'm so sorry,' de Lisle said in genuine discomfort. 'It's our local expression for the Cabinet. It was silly of me.'

  They were approaching the Embassy. As they filtered left to cross the carriageway, the black Opel slid slowly past like an old nanny who had seen her children safely over the road. The lobby was in turmoil. Despatch riders mingled with jour­nalists and police. An iron grille, painted a protective orange, sealed off the basement staircase. De Lisle led him quickly to the first floor. Someone must have telephoned from the desk because Bradfield was already standing as they entered. 'Rawley, this is Turner,' de Lisle said, as if there were not much he could do about it, and prudently closed the door on them.

  Bradfield was a hard-built, self-denying man, thin-boned and well preserved, of that age and generation which can do with very little sleep. Yet the strains of the last twenty-four hours were already showing in the small, uncommon bruises at the corners of his eyes, and the unnatural pallor of his com­plexion. He studied Turner without comment: the canvas bag clutched in the heavy fist, the battered fawn suit, the unyield­ing, classless features; and it seemed for a moment as if an impulse of involuntary anger would threaten his customary composure; of aesthetic objection that anything so offensively incongruous should have been set before him at such a time.

  Outside in the corridor Turner heard the hushed murmur of busy voices, the clip of feet, the faster chatter of the typewriters and the phantom throb of code machines from the cypher room.