Faith. Len Deighton

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СКАЧАТЬ Frank was rather more subtle and able to hide his feelings.

      Dicky had been pacing about and now he turned on his heel and left the room, saying he would be back in a moment.

      ‘He gave a little party last night at a new restaurant he found in Dahlem. Indian food apparently, and he suspects the bhindi bhaji has upset him,’ Frank confided when Dicky had gone. ‘Do you know what a bhindi bhaji is?’

      ‘No, I’m not quite sure I do, Frank.’

      Frank nodded his approval, as if such knowledge would have alienated us. ‘Did Bret Rensselaer tell you to see Werner in Zurich?’

      I hesitated, but the fact that Frank had waited for Dicky to exit encouraged me to confide in him. ‘No, Bret told me to stay away from Werner. But Werner gets to hear things on the grapevine long before we get to know them through our channels. He might say something useful.’

      ‘Dicky has staked a lot on having VERDI sitting in London spilling his guts to us. VERDI dead means all Dicky’s planning dies with him. He’ll be casting about for someone to blame; make sure it’s not you.’

      ‘I wasn’t there,’ I explained for what must have been the thousandth time. ‘He was dead when we got there.’

      ‘VERDI’s father was a famous Red Army veteran: one of the first into Berlin when the city fell.’

      ‘So everyone keeps telling me.’ I looked at him. ‘Who cares? That was over forty years ago and he was just one of thousands.’

      ‘No,’ said Frank. ‘VERDI’s father was the lieutenant commanding Red Banner No. 5.’

      ‘Now you’ve got me,’ I admitted.

      ‘Well, well! Berlin expert admits defeat,’ said Frank smugly. ‘Let me tell you the story. In mid-April 1945 – as they advanced on Berlin – the 79th Rifle Corps got orders from the Military Council of the Third Shock Army that a red flag was to be planted on top of the Reichstag. And Stalin had personally ordered that it should be in place by May Day. On April 30th, with the deadline ticking, our man and his team of infantry sergeants fought their way up inside the Reichstag building, from room to room, floor to floor, until they climbed up on to the roof and with only four of them still alive, completed their task with just seventy minutes to go before it was May Day.’

      ‘No, but I saw the movie,’ I said.

      ‘Make jokes if you like. For war babies like you it may mean nothing, but I guarantee that communists everywhere would have been devastated at the news that the son of such a man – a symbol of the highest peak of Stalinist achievement – would come over to us.’

      ‘Devastated enough to kill him to prevent it?’

      ‘That’s what we want to know, isn’t it?’

      ‘I’ll find out for you,’ I said flippantly.

      ‘Don’t go rushing off to Switzerland to ask Werner,’ said Frank. ‘You know Dicky; he is sure to have asked the Berne office to assign someone to meet the plane and discreetly find out where you go. Treat Dicky carefully, Bernard. You can’t afford to make more enemies.’

      ‘Thanks, Frank,’ I said and meant it warmly. But such assurances left Frank unsatisfied, and now he gave me a penetrating stare as if trying to see into my mind. Long ago he had promised my father that he would look after me, and he took that promise seriously, just as Frank took everything seriously, which was what made him so difficult to please. And like a father, Frank was apt to resent any sign that I could have a mind of my own and enjoy private thoughts that I did not share with him. I suppose all parents feel that anything less than unobstructed open-door access to all their offspring’s thoughts and emotions is tantamount to patricide.

      Frank said: ‘As soon as Dicky knew that VERDI was dead he said someone must have talked.’

      ‘Dicky likes to think that people are plotting against him.’

      ‘Can’t you see the obvious?’ said Frank with an unusual display of exasperation. ‘They haven’t sent Dicky here as a messenger. Dicky is important nowadays. Whatever Dicky thinks will inevitably become the prevailing view in London.’

      ‘No one talked in London or anywhere else. It’s absurd. They’ll eventually discover their mistake.’

      ‘Oh no they won’t. The people in London never discover their mistakes. They don’t even admit them when others discover their mistakes. No, Bernard, they’ll make their theories come true whatever it costs in time and trouble and self-delusion.’

      I pulled a face.

      Frank said: ‘And that means that you’ll be put under the microscope … Unless of course you can take Dicky aside and gently persuade him that he’s wrong.’ He prodded his oilskin tobacco pouch as if resenting the torment it offered him. ‘Werner’s contract was ended and he was hounded for no real reason except that he seems to upset someone on high. From what little I hear he’s feeling damned bitter about it all. But he’s not working for us. Don’t let him persuade you he is.’

      ‘You know what us field agents are like,’ I said.

      ‘I’m not sure I’m getting through to you.’

      ‘Tell me again, Frank.’

      He had the oilskin pouch in his hand. Now he swung it around. ‘Admit it. Someone talked, didn’t they? It wasn’t just a coincidence that you arrive in Magdeburg and there is a warm corpse waiting for you.’

      ‘About VERDI?’

      ‘Don’t be so stupid. Of course. They set him up and killed him. Had they squeezed him before killing him they might have got you too.’

      ‘And that’s what Dicky thinks?’

      ‘You have a different theory?’ He had the tobacco pouch in his hand, holding it up as if to admire its lines but also keeping it within olfactory range.

      ‘It’s one way of looking at it,’ I said grudgingly.

      ‘Yes, it is,’ said Frank, sniffing at the tobacco pouch. ‘Someone preferred VERDI dead, rather than alive and over here talking to us.’

      ‘Maybe.’

      ‘How long were you held up at that militia checkpoint outside Magdeburg?’

      ‘About half an hour.’

      ‘And would you say that when you arrived VERDI had been dead for about half an hour?’

      ‘What are you getting at? Are you suggesting that the delay was arranged so that VERDI could reach the rendezvous and be intercepted and killed before we got there?’

      ‘It all fits together doesn’t it?’ said Frank.

      ‘No.’ He looked at me and I yielded a little. ‘It’s possible. But there is no evidence whatsoever to support that theory. Unless you have some evidence to add.’

      ‘Or … looking at this business and pretending that we didn’t know the agents involved …’ Frank’s voice trailed off. ‘Do СКАЧАТЬ