A Small Town In Germany Read online

  'And the question of vetting never crossed your mind?'

  The self-critical note returned: 'Never.'

  'Well, we all have our moments,' said Turner quietly. 'And that's how he got his access?'

  'There's more to it than that.'

  'More? That's just about the lot, isn't it?'

  'We not only have archives here; we have a Destruction programme as well. It has been running for years. The purpose is to keep Registry space available for new files and to get rid of old ones we no longer need. It sounds a somewhat academic project and in many ways it is; nevertheless, it happens to be vital. There is a clearly defined economic limit to the amount of paper Registry can handle, and to the amount of paper it will hold. The problem is akin to that of road traffic: we are constantly creating more paper than we can digest. Very naturally, it was another of those jobs we took up and put down as time allowed; it was also an absolute curse. For a while it would be forgotten; then the Office would write and ask for our latest figures.' He shrugged. 'As I say, it's very simple. We can't go on indefinitely, even in a place this size, building up more files than we destroy. Registry's bursting at the seams already.'

  'So Harting proposed himself for the task.'

  'Precisely.'

  'And you agreed.'

  'On a provisional basis. He should try his hand and see how it went. He has been working at it off and on for five months. When in doubt, I told him, he was to consult de Lisle. He never did so.'

  'Where did he actually do this work? In his room?'

  Bradfield barely hesitated. 'In Chancery Registry, where the most sensitive documents are kept. He had the run of the strong-room. He could draw whatever he wanted provided he didn't overplay his hand. There isn't even any record of what he did look at. There are also some letters missing; the Regis­trar will give you the details.'

  Slowly Turner stood up, brushing his hands together as if they had sand on them.

  'Of the forty-odd missing files, eighteen are drawn from the Personality Survey and contain the most sensitive material on high-ranking German politicians. A careful reading would point clearly to our most delicate sources. The rest are Top Secret and cover Anglo-German agreements on a variety of subjects: secret treaties, secret codicils to published agree­ments. If he wished to embarrass us, he could hardly have chosen better. Some of the files go right back to forty-eight or nine.'

  'And the one special file? "Conversations Formal and Informal"?'

  'Is what we call a Green. It is subject to special procedures.'

  'How many Greens are there in the Embassy?'

  'This is the only one. It was in its place in Registry strong­room on Thursday morning. The Registrar noticed its absence on Thursday evening and assumed it was in operation. By Saturday morning he was deeply concerned. On Sunday he reported the loss to me.'

  'Tell me,' said Turner at last. 'What happened to him dur­ing last year? What happened between the two Decembers? Apart from Karfeld.'

  'Nothing specific.'

  'Then why did you go off him?'

  'I didn't,' Bradfield replied with contempt. 'Since I never had any feeling for him either way, the question does not arise. I merely learnt during the intervening year to recognise his technique. I saw how he operated on people; how he wheedled his way in. I saw through him, that's all.'

  Turner stared at him.

  'And what did you see?'

  Bradfield's voice was as crisp and as finite and as irreducible as a mathematical formula. 'Deceit. I'd have thought I had made that plain by now.'

  Turner got up.

  'I'll begin with his room.'

  'The Chancery Guard has the keys. They're expecting you. Ask for Macmullen.'

  'I want to see his house, his friends, his neighbours; if neces­sary I'll talk to his foreign contacts. I'll break whatever eggs I've got to, no more no less. If you don't like it, tell the Ambassador. Who's the Registrar?'

  'Meadowes.'

  'Arthur Meadowes?'

  'I believe so.'

  Something held him back: a reluctance, a hint of uncer­tainty, almost of dependence, a middle tone quite out of character with anything that had gone before.

  'Meadowes was in Warsaw, wasn't he?'

  'That's correct.'

  Louder now: 'And Meadowes has a list of the missing files, has he?'

  'And letters.'

  'And Harting worked for him, of course.'

  'Of course. He is expecting you to call on him.'

  'I'll see his room first.' It was a resolution he seemed to have reached already.

  'As you wish. You mentioned you would also visit his house -'

  'Well?'

  'I am afraid that at present it is not possible. It is under police protection since yesterday.'

  'Is that general?'

  'What?'

  'The police protection?'

  'Siebkron insists upon it. I cannot quarrel with him now.'

  'It applies to all hirings?'

  'Principally the more senior ones. I imagine they have included Harting's because it is remote.'

  'You don't sound convinced.'

  'I cannot think of any other reason.'

  'What about Iron Curtain Embassies; did Harting hang around them at all?'

  'He went to the Russians occasionally; I cannot say how often.'

  'This man Praschko, the friend he had, the politician. You said he used to be a fellow-traveller.'

  'That was fifteen years ago.'

  'And when did the association end?'

  'It's on the file. About five years ago.'

  'That's when he had the fight in Cologne. Perhaps it was with Praschko.'

  'Anything is possible.'

  'One more question.'

  'Well?'

  'That contract he had. If it had expired... say last Thursday?'

  'Well?'

  'Would you have renewed it? Again?'

  'We are under great strain. Yes, I would have renewed it.'

  'You must miss him.'

  The door was opened from the outside by de Lisle. His gentle features were drawn and solemn.

  'Ludwig Siebkron rang; the exchange had orders not to put through your calls. I spoke to him myself.'

  'Well?'

  'About the librarian, Eich: the wretched woman they beat up in Hanover.'

  'About her?'

  'I'm afraid she died an hour ago.'

  Bradfield considered this intelligence in silence. 'Find out where the funeral is. The Ambassador must make a gesture; a telegram to the dependants rather than flowers. Nothing too conspicuous; just his deepest sympathy. Talk to them in Private Office, they'll know the wording. And something from the Anglo-German Society. You'd better handle that yourself. And send a cable to the Association of Assistant Librarians; they were enquiring about her. And ring Hazel, will you, and tell her? She asked particularly to be kept informed.'

  He was poised and perfectly in control. 'If you require any­thing,' he added to Turner, 'tell de Lisle.'

  Turner was watching him.

  'Otherwise we shall expect you tomorrow night. About five to eight? Germans are very punctual. It is the local custom that we assemble before they arrive. And if you're going down to his room, perhaps you would take that cushion. I see no point in our having it up here.'

  Albino Cork, stooped over the cypher machines while he coaxed the strips of print from the rollers, heard the thud and turned his pink eyes sharply towards the large figure in the doorway.

  'That's my bag. Leave it where it is; I'll be in later.'

  'Righty-ho,' said Cork and thought: a Funny. Just his luck, with the whole ruddy world blowing up in his face, and Janet's baby due any minute, and that poor woman in Hanover turn­ing up her toes, to be landed with a Funny in the dayroom. This was not his only grudge. The German steel strike was spreading nicely; if he had only thought of it on Friday and not Saturday, that little flutter on Swedish steel would have shown a four-bob capital profit in three da
ys; and five per cent per day, in Cork's losing battle with clerical status, was what villas in the Adriatic were made of. Top Secret, he read wearily, Personal for Bradfield and Decypher Yourself: how much longer will that go on? Capri... Crete... Spetsai... Elba... Give me an island to myself; he sang, in a high-pitched pop improvisation - for Cork had dreams of cutting his own discs as well - Give me an Island to myself; Any Island, Any Island but Bonn.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  John Gaunt

  The crowd in the lobby had thinned. The Post Office clock above the sealed lift said ten thirty-five; those who dared not risk a trip to the canteen had gathered at the front desk; the Chancery Guard had made mid-morning tea, and they were drinking it and talking in subdued voices when they heard his approaching footsteps. His heels had metal quarters and they echoed against the pseudo-marble walls like shots on a valley range. The despatch riders, with that nose for authority which soldiers have, gently set down their cups and fastened the buttons of their tunics.

  'Macmullen?'

  He stood on the lowest step, one hand propped massively on the banister, the other clutching the embroidered cushion. To either side of him, corridors haunted with iron riot grilles and free-standing pillars of chrome led into the dark like ghettos from a splendid city. The silence was suddenly impor­tant, making a fool of all that had gone before.

  'Macmullen's off duty, sir. Gone down to Naafi.'

  'Who are you?'

  'Gaunt, sir. I'm standing in for him.'

  'My name's Turner. I'm checking physical security. I want to see Room Twenty-one.'

  Gaunt was a small man, a devout Welshman, with a long memory of the Depression inherited from his father. He had come to Bonn from Cardiff, where he had driven motor-cars for the police. He carried the keys in his right hand, low down by his side, and his gait was square and rather solemn, so that as he preceded Turner into the dark mouth of the corridor, he resembled a miner making for the pithead.

  'Shocking really, all what they've been up to,' Gaunt chanted, talking ahead of him and letting the sound carry backwards. 'Peter Aldock, he's my stringer, see, he's got a brother in Han­over, used to be with the Occupation, married a German girl and opened a grocer's shop. Terrified he was for sure: well, he says, they all know my George is English. What'll happen to him? Worse than the Congo. Hullo there, Padre!'

  The Chaplain sat at a portable typewriter in a small white cell opposite the telephone exchange, beneath a picture of his wife, his door wide open for confession. A rush cross was tucked behind the cord. 'Good morning, John then,' he replied in a slightly reproving tone which recalled for both of them the granite intractability of their Welsh God; and Gaunt said, 'Hullo there,' again but did not alter his pace. From all around them came the unmistakable sounds of a multi-lingual community: the lonely German drone of the Head Press Reader dictating a translation; the bark of the travel clerk shouting into the telephone; the distant whistling, tuneful and un-English, that seemed to come from everywhere, piped in from other corridors. Turner caught the smell of salami and second breakfasts, of newsprint and disinfectant and he thought: all change at Zurich, you're abroad at last.

  'It's mainly the locally employed down here,' Gaunt explained above the din. 'They aren't allowed no higher, being German.' His sympathy for foreigners was felt but con­trolled: a nurse's sympathy, tempered by vocation.

  A door opened to their left; a shaft of white light broke suddenly upon them, catching the poor plaster of the walls and the tattered green of a bilingual noticeboard. Two girls, about to emerge from information Registry, drew back to let them by and Turner looked them over mechanically, thinking: this was his world. Second class and foreign. One carried a thermos, the other laboured under a stack of files. Beyond them, through an outer window protected with jeweller's screens, he glimpsed the car park and heard the roar of a motor-bike as a despatch rider drove off. Gaunt had ducked away to the right, down another passage; he stopped, and they were at the door, Gaunt fumbling with the key and Turner staring over his shoulder at the notice which hung from the centre panel: 'Harting Leo, Claims and Consular', a sudden witness to the living man, or a sudden monument to the dead. The characters of the first two words were a good two inches high, ruled at the edges and cross-hatched in red and green crayon; the word 'Consular' was done a good deal larger, and the letters were outlined in ink to give them that extra sub­stance which the title evidently demanded. Stooping, Turner lightly touched the surface; it was paper mounted on hard­board, and even by that poor light he could make out the faint ruled lines of pencil dictating the upper and lower limits of each letter; defining the borders of a modest existence perhaps; or of a life unnaturally curtailed by deceit. 'Deceit. I'd have thought I'd have made that plain by now.'

  'Hurry,' he said.

  Gaunt unlocked the door. As Turner seized the handle and shoved it open, he heard his sister's voice on the telephone again and his own reply as he slammed down the receiver: 'Tell her I've left the country.' The windows were closed. The heat struck up at them from the linoleum. There was a stink of rubber and wax. One curtain was slightly drawn. Gaunt reached out to pull it back.

  'Leave it. Keep away from the window. And stay there. If anyone comes, tell them to get out.' He tossed the embroid­ered cushion on to a chair and peered round the room.

  The desk had chrome handles; it was better than Bradfield's desk. The calendar on the wall advertised a firm of Dutch diplomatic importers. Turner moved very lightly, for all his bulk, examining but never touching. An old army map hung on the wall, divided into the original zones of military occupa­tion. The British was marked in bright green, a fertile patch among the foreign deserts. It's like a prison cell, he thought, maximum security; maybe it's just the bars. What a place to break out of, and who wouldn't? The smell was foreign but he couldn't place it.

  'Well, I am surprised,' Gaunt was saying. 'There's a lot gone, I must say.'

  Turner did not look at him.

  'Such as what?'

  'I don't know. Gadgets, all sorts. This is Mr Harting's room,' he explained. 'Very gadget-minded, Mr Harting is.'

  'What sort of gadgets?'

  'Well, he had a tea machine, you know the kind that wakes you up? Made a lovely cup of tea, that did. Pity that's gone, really.'

  'What else?'

  'A fire. The new fan type with the two bars over. And a lamp. A smashing one, Japanese. Go all directions, that lamp would. Turn it half-way and it burned soft. Very cheap to run as well, he told me. But I wouldn't have one, you know, not now they've cut the allowances. Still,' he continued consol­ingly, 'I expect he's taken them home, don't you, if that's where he's gone.'

  'Yes. Yes, I expect he has.'

  On the window-sill stood a transistor radio. Stooping until his eyes were on a level with the panel, Turner switched it on. At once they heard the mawkish tones of a British Forces announcer commenting on the Hanover riots and the pros­pects for a British victory in Brussels. Slowly Turner rolled the tuning needle along the lighted band, his ear cocked all the time to the changing babel of French, German and Dutch.

  'I thought you said physical security.'

  'I did.'

  'You haven't hardly looked at the windows. Or the locks.'

  'I will, I will.' He had found a Slav voice and he was listening with deep concentration. 'Know him well, did you? Come in here often for a cup?'

  'Quite. Depends on how busy, really.'

  Switching off the radio, Turner stood up. 'Wait outside,' he said. 'And give me the keys.'

  'What's he done then?' Gaunt demanded, hesitating. 'What's gone wrong?'

  'Done? Nothing. He's on compassionate leave. I want to be alone, that's all.'

  'They say he's in trouble.'

  'Who?'

  'Talkers.'

  'What sort of trouble?'

  'I don't know. Car smash maybe. He wasn't at choir practice, see. Nor Chapel.'

  'Does he drive badly?'

  'Can't say really.'r />
  Part defiant, part curious, Gaunt stayed by the door, watch­ing as Turner pulled open the wooden wardrobe and peered inside. Three hair-dryers, still in their boxes, lay on the floor beside a pair of rubber overshoes.

  'You're a friend of his, aren't you?'

  'Not really. Only from choir, see.'

  'Ah,' said Turner, staring at him now. 'You sang for him. I used to sing in choir myself.'

  'Oh really now, where's that then?'

  'Yorkshire,' Turner said with awful friendliness, while his pale gaze continued to fix upon Gaunt's plain face. 'I hear he's a lovely organist.'

  'Not at all bad, I will say,' Gaunt agreed, rashly recognising a common interest.

  'Who's his special friend; someone else in the choir, was it? A lady perhaps?' Turner enquired, still not far from piety.

  'He's not close to anyone, Leo.'

  'Then who does he buy these for?'

  The hair-dryers were of varying quality and complexity; the prices on the boxes ran from eighty to two hundred marks. 'Who for?' he repeated.

  'All of us. Dips, non-dips; it didn't signify. He runs a service, see; works the diplomatic discounts. Always do you a favour, Leo will. Don't matter what you fancy: radios, dish-washers, cars; he'll get you a bit off, like; you know.'

  'Knows his way round, does he?'

  'That's right.'

  'Takes a cut too, I expect. For his trouble,' Turner suggested coaxingly. 'Quite right too.'

  'I didn't say so.'

  'Do you a girl as well, would he? Mister Fixit, is that it?'

  'Certainly not,' said Gaunt, much shocked.

  'What was in it for him?'

  'Nothing. Not that I know of.'

  'Just a little friend of all the world, eh? Likes to be liked. Is that it?'

  'Well, we all do really, don't we?'