Funeral in Berlin. Len Deighton

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       11

      Zugzwang: to move a chess piece under duress.

       London, Thursday, October 10th

I moved into top as I passed Parliament Square. The night was young and it had nothing much to do. Tiny moons moved across St James’s Park playing tiddly-winks with the shiny leaves, and the speedometer moved up to nudge sixty. The radiotelephone called me back to earth. It was the Charlotte Street Control Room: ‘Message for you oboe ten from Northern Car Hire.¹ Do you read me? Over.’

      ‘Loud and clear. Let’s have it.’

      ‘Message from Mr D. You are to contact Mr Hallam at Betty’s Club. Is that roger? Oboe ten. Over.’

      ‘Only too roger.’

      ‘Observe your r/t procedure, oboe ten. Your customer will ask you for change of ten shillings. You will have four half-crowns ready for him. Is that roger? Over.’

      ‘What are you talking about? What’s Hallam want ten bob for?’

      ‘Oboe ten. Observe procedure please. I am giving you your introduction formality for this customer. Is that roger? Over.’

      ‘I don’t know what you are talking about,’ I said. ‘Phone me at home later on. On the landline. OK?’

      The Scots operator’s nerve broke before I got to Hyde Park Corner.

      ‘For Christ’s sake. Oboe ten. You know what the Home Office people are like. He wants you to give him four half-dollars so that he knows who you are.’

      ‘What do you mean “so that he knows who I am”? I saw Hallam only the other day. Who the hell is he going to think I am if I don’t give him four half-crowns – James Bond?’

      ‘Please just give him the half-crowns, oboe ten.’

      ‘I don’t know how many make ten bob,’ I said, but the operator didn’t come back on the air again. Inside the car the radio shone with a faint green spot of light. I turned the volume and filled the car with big band sound as a volley of raindrops spattered across the windscreen.

      Betty’s was one of the small set of London clubs that have been going over twenty years on a mixed membership, face up to the financial crisis of imminent closure once a year but never get around to pasting the corners of the wallpaper back into place. Next to the magazine rack, a brown-haired man was slugging shillings into a one-armed bandit without letting go of his Tuborg lager. The crash of the machine punctuated some gentle Sinatra. Without looking at me he sensed my approach, but he continued to watch the spinning oranges and pineapples.

      ‘Got change of ten bob?’ he said. Before I could reply, the fruit machine gave three neat clicks and then a shudder as shillings showered into the metal tray.

      ‘Looks like you won’t be needing change now,’ I said.

      He turned suddenly and grasped my cuff. His watery brown eyes stared into mine for a long time before he said, ‘Don’t you believe it, dear. I still do.’ It was Hallam, the man from Bina Gardens, but his hair was now a rich brown colour. He scooped up the shillings and showered them into his already sagging pockets.

      ‘First-rate for the gas meter,’ he said. I held four half-crowns extended towards him while he spent five minutes trying to pry apart two ten-shilling notes that were only one. Reluctantly he gave it to me. Then he took his time fitting the base of a Player’s No 3 into a four-inch holder. I flicked a Swan Vesta alight with my thumbnail and he nosed his fag down into the fire and flame. He was well alight before he spoke.

      ‘Stok and the Gehlen boys are both being helpful?’

      ‘Both being very helpful,’ I said. ‘Did you ever find Confucius?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Hallam. ‘The fickle creature came back to me Tuesday morning, very early. So dirty; heaven knows where he had been. So independent the Siamese. I really should buy a collar for him but it seems so cruel.’ Somehow he got four syllables into ‘cruel’.

      ‘Yes,’ I said.

      I had a street map of Berlin in my pocket. I moved a couple of ashtrays and a vase of plastic tulips and spread it across the table.

      ‘Stok will bring Semitsa into East Berlin somewhere within this rectangle.’ I drew a very light pencil mark just north of Alexanderplatz.

      ‘He will tell me where later. If I don’t like it, I can fix somewhere else in the same district.’ Hallam had his Tuborg wrapped around his face but I knew he was taking in every word.

      ‘Why don’t you make the Russkies bring him down to Marienborn and hand him over the West German frontier?’ he asked.

      ‘Not possible,’ I said.

      He nodded.

      ‘Outside Stok’s district. How foolish of me. Very well then. You have Semitsa – or you think you have him – here.’ He stabbed the street map.

      ‘Now,’ I said, ‘from there the Gehlen boys will post him special delivery to West Berlin.’

      ‘Then what?’ asked Hallam.

      ‘If I know anything about the Gehlen boys they will delay the transfer at least twenty-four hours so that they can pump Semitsa for anything that might be useful to them. Then using the documents that your Home Office people are going to provide we bring him to London as a naturalized British subject returning home.’

      ‘How will the Gehlen people move him across the wall?’ said Hallam.

      ‘You know better than to ask that and so do I,’ I said. ‘If I ask, they’ll just tell me a lot of reasonably creative lies.’

      ‘Did you give me my change?’ he said.

      ‘Yes I did,’ I said, ‘four half-crowns.’

      Hallam opened his wallet and counted his paper money.

      ‘The Home Office won’t release the documents until one of our own people actually sees Semitsa in the flesh in West Berlin.’ I could see the slack red lining of his watery eyes. He swung his chin from side to side to emphasize the negative and the jaw opened to repeat the decision.

      ‘You see why …’ he began.

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