Berlin Game. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ breathed in slowly. ‘You don’t have to be a banker to get into it,’ I said patiently. ‘Werner Volkmann has been doing those forfaiting deals for several years now. He has good contacts in the East. He moves in and out of the Eastern Sector with minimum fuss. They like him because they know he tries to do tie-in deals with East German exports –’

      Bret held up his hand. ‘What tie-in deals?’

      ‘A lot of the banks just want to handle cash. Werner is prepared to shop around for a customer in the West who’ll take some East German exports. In that way he can save them some hard currency or maybe even swing a deal where the export price equals the money due for the imports.’

      ‘Is that so?’ said Bret reflectively.

      ‘Volkmann could be very useful for us, Bret,’ I said.

      ‘How?’

      ‘Moving money, moving goods, moving people.’

      ‘We do that already.’

      ‘But how many people do we have who can go back and forth without question?’

      ‘So what’s Volkmann’s problem?’

      ‘You know what Frank Harrington is like. He doesn’t get along with Werner, and never has.’

      ‘And anyone Frank doesn’t like, Berlin never uses.’

      ‘Frank is Berlin,’ I said. ‘It’s a small staff there now, Bret. Frank has to approve every damned thing.’

      ‘And you want me to tell Frank how to run his Berlin office?’

      ‘Do you ever read anything I send you, Bret? It says there that I just want the Department to approve a rollover guarantee of funds from one of our own merchant banks.’

      ‘And that’s money,’ said Bret triumphantly.

      ‘We’re simply talking about one of our own banking outfits, using their own expertise to give Werner normal facilities at current bank rates.’

      ‘So why can’t he get that already?’

      ‘Because the sort of banks which best back these forfaiting deals want to know who Werner Volkmann is. And this Department has an old-fashioned rule that onetime field agents shouldn’t go around giving the D-G as a reference, or saying that the way they got to learn about the forfaiting business was by running agents across the Wall since they were eighteen years old.’

      ‘So tell me how Volkmann has stayed in business.’

      ‘By going outside the regular banking network, by raising money from the money market. But that means trimming his agent’s fee. It’s making life tough for him. If he gives up the forfaiting business, we’ll lose a good opportunity and a useful contact.’

      ‘Suppose he fouls up on one of these deals and the bank doesn’t get its money.’

      ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake, Bret. The boys in the bank are big enough to change their own nappies.’

      ‘And they’ll squeal bloody murder.’

      ‘What do we have those lousy banks for, unless it’s for this kind of job?’

      ‘What kind of dough are we talking about?’

      ‘A million Deutschemark rolling over would be about right.’

      ‘Are you out of your tiny mind?’ said Bret. ‘A million D-mark? For that no good son of a bitch? No, sir.’ He scratched the side of his nose. ‘Did Volkmann put you up to all this?’

      ‘Not a word. He likes to show me what a big success he is.’

      ‘So how do you know he’s strapped for cash?’

      ‘In this business,’ I said, ‘it does no harm to flip the pages of someone’s bank account from time to time.’

      ‘One of these days you’ll come unstuck doing one of your unofficial investigations into something that doesn’t concern you. What would you do if the bells started ringing?’

      ‘I’d just swear it was an official investigation,’ I said.

      ‘The hell you would,’ said Rensselaer.

      I started to leave the room. ‘Before you go,’ he said, ‘what would you say if I told you that Brahms Four asked for you? Suppose I said he won’t trust anyone else in the Department? What would you say about that?’

      ‘I’d say he sounds like a good judge of character.’

      ‘Okay, smart ass. Now let’s have an answer for the record.’

      ‘It could simply mean he trusts me. He doesn’t know many Department people on personal terms.’

      ‘Very diplomatic, Bernard. Well, downstairs in Evaluation they are beginning to think Brahms Four has been turned. Most people I’ve spoken with downstairs are now saying Brahms Four might have been a senior KGB man from the time Silas Gaunt first encountered him in that bar.’

      ‘And most people downstairs,’ I said patiently, ‘wouldn’t recognize a senior bloody KGB officer if he walked up to them waving a red flag.’

      Rensselaer nodded as if considering this aspect of his staff for the first time. ‘Could be you’re right, Bernard.’ He always said Bernard with the accent on the second syllable; it was the most American thing about him.

      It was at that moment that Sir Henry Clevemore came into the room. He was a tall aloof figure, slightly unkempt, with that well-worn appearance that the British upper class cultivate to show they are not nouveau riche.

      ‘I’m most awfully sorry, Bret,’ said the Director-General as he caught sight of me. ‘I had no idea you were in conference.’ He frowned as he looked at me and tried to remember my name. ‘Good to see you, Samson,’ he said eventually. ‘I hear you spent the weekend with Silas. Did you have a good time? What has he got down there, fishing?’

      ‘Billiards,’ I said. ‘Mostly billiards.’

      The D-G gave a little smile and said, ‘Yes, that sounds more like Silas.’ He turned away to look at Bret’s desk top. ‘I’ve mislaid my spectacles,’ he said. ‘Did I leave them in here?’

      ‘No, sir. You haven’t been in here this morning,’ said Bret. ‘But I seem to remember that you keep spare reading glasses in the top drawer of your secretary’s desk. Shall I get them for you?’

      ‘Of course, you’re right,’ said the D-G. ‘The top drawer, I remember now. My secretary’s off sick this morning. I’m afraid I simply can’t manage when she’s away.’ He smiled at Bret, and then at me, to make it perfectly clear that this was a joke born out of his natural humility and goodwill.

      ‘The old man’s got a lot on his plate right now,’ said Bret loyally after Sir Henry had ambled off along the corridor muttering apologies about interrupting our ‘conference’.

      ‘Does СКАЧАТЬ