Mexico Set

‘Cash?’

‘Oh yes, cash. Strictly no cheques.’ He shifted uneasily in his seat, and I had the feeling that he now regretted this confession. ‘High-denomination notes in plain envelopes. No registered letters; that would mean a lot of names and addresses and post-office forms. Too risky, that sort of thing, they said.’

‘And where has all this money been going to?’

He put his coffee on the table and began searching the pockets of his pants as if looking for a cigarette. Then he stood up and looked round. Eventually he found a silver box on the table. He took one for himself. Then he offered the open box to me. It was, of course, that sort of evasive temporizing that armchair psychologists call ‘displacement activity’. Before he could repeat the whole performance in pursuit of matches, I threw him mine. He lit his cigarette and then waved the smoke away from his face nervously. ‘You know where it’s been going to, Bernd. Trade unions, peace movements, “ban the bomb” groups. Moscow can’t be seen making donations to them. The money has to come from “little people” all over the world. You weren’t born yesterday, Bernd. We all know the way it’s done.’

‘Yes, we all know the way it’s done, Paul.’ I swung round to see him. On the side-table there was the bottle of brandy that Stinnes and I had plundered. I wondered if that was what had attracted his gaze when he had stared over my shoulder. He wasn’t looking at it now; he was looking at me.

‘Don’t damn well sneer at me. I’ve got my relatives to worry about. And if I hadn’t koshered their bloody contributions someone else would do it for them. It’s not going to change the history of the world, is it?’ He was still moving round the room, looking at the furnishings as if seeing them for the first time.

‘I don’t know what it’s going to do, Paul. You’re the one that had the expensive education: schools in Switzerland, schools in America and two years’ postgraduate studies at Yale. You tell me if it’s going to change the history of the world.’

‘You weren’t so high and mighty in the old days,’ said Biedermann. ‘You weren’t so superior when you sold me that old Ferrari that kept breaking down.’

‘It was a good car. I had no trouble with it,’ I said. ‘I only sold it because I went to London. You should have looked after it better.’ What a memory he had. I’d quite forgotten selling him that car. Maybe that’s how the rich got richer – by remembering in resentful detail every transaction they made.

He kept his cigarette in his mouth and, still standing, fingered the keys of the computer as if about to use it. ‘It’s getting more and more difficult,’ he said. He turned to look at me, the smoke of the cigarette rising across his face like a fine veil and going into his eyes so that he was squinting. ‘Now that the Mexicans have nationalized the banks, and the peso has dropped through the floor, there are endless regulations about foreign exchange. It’s not so easy to handle these transactions without attracting attention.’

‘So tell your Russians that,’ I suggested.

‘I don’t want them to solve my problems. I want to get out of the whole business.’

‘Tell them that.’

‘And risk what happens to my relatives?’

‘You talk as though you are some sort of master spy,’ I said. ‘If you tell them you’ve had enough, that will be the end of it.’

‘They’d kill me,’ he said.

‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘You’re not important enough for them to waste time or effort on.’

‘They’d make an example of me. They’d cut my throat and make sure everyone knew why.’

‘They’d not make an example of you,’ I said. ‘How could they? The last thing they want to do is draw attention to their secret financing network. No, as long as they thought you’d keep their secrets, they’d let you go, Paul. They’d huff and puff and shout and threaten in the hope you’d get frightened enough to keep going. But once they saw you were determined to end it they’d reconcile themselves to that.’

‘If only I could believe it.’ He blew a lot of smoke. ‘One of the new clerks in my Mexico City office – a German fellow – has been asking me questions about some of the money I sent out. It’s just a matter of time …’

‘You don’t let the staff in your office address the envelopes, do you?’

‘No, of course not. But I do the envelopes on the addressing machine. I can’t sit up all night writing out envelopes.’

‘You’re a fool, Paul.’

‘I know,’ he said sadly. ‘This German kid was updating the address lists and he noticed these charities and trade unions that were all coded in the same way. It was in a different code from all the other addresses. I said it was part of my Christmas charity list but I’m not sure he believed me.’

‘You’d better transfer him to one of your other offices,’ I said.

‘I’m going to send him to Caracas but it won’t really solve the problem. Some other clerk will notice. I can’t address the envelopes by hand and have handwritten evidence all over the place, can I?’

‘Why are you telling me all this, Paul?’

‘I’ve got to talk it over with someone.’

‘Don’t give me that,’ I said.

He stubbed out his cigarette and said, ‘I told the Russians that the British secret service was becoming suspicious. I invented stories about strangers making inquiries at various offices.’

‘Did they believe that?’

‘Phone calls. I always said the inquiries were phone calls. So I didn’t have to describe anyone’s physical appearance.’ He went over to the side-table and picked up the bottle of brandy. He put it into a cupboard and shut the door. It looked like the simple action of a tidy man who didn’t want to see bottles of booze standing around in his office.

‘That was clever,’ I said, although I thought such a device would sound very unconvincing to any experienced case officer.

‘I knew they’d have to give me a respite if I was under surveillance.’

‘And talking to me is a part of that scheme? Did you tell them about my phone call? Was it that that gave you the idea? Is that why they came here last night?’

He didn’t answer my question, and that convinced me that my guess was right. Biedermann had thought up all this nonsense about the British becoming suspicious only after I’d phoned him. He said, ‘You’re something in the espionage business, you’ve admitted that. I realize you’re not in any sort of senior position, but you must know people who are. And you’re the only contact I have.’

I grunted. I didn’t know whether that was Paul Biedermann’s sincere opinion or whether he was hoping to provoke me into claiming power and influence.

‘Does that mean you can help?’ he said.

I finished the coffee and got to my feet. ‘You copy that list of addresses for me – London might be interested in that – and I’ll make sure that Bonn is told that we are investigating you. You’ll become what NATO intelligence calls “sacred”. None of the other security teams will investigate you without informing us. That will get back to your masters quickly enough.’

‘Wait a moment, Bernd. I don’t want Bonn restricting my movements or opening my mail.’

‘You can’t have it both ways, Paul. “Sacred” is the lowest category we have. There’s not much chance that Bonn will find that interesting enough to do anything: they’ll leave you to us.’

Biedermann didn’t look too pleased at the idea of his reputation suffering, but he realized it was the best offer he was likely to get. ‘Don’t double-cross me,’ he said.

‘How would I do that?’

‘I’m not up for sale to the highest bidder. I want out. I don’t want to exchange a master in Moscow for a master in London.’

‘You make me laugh, Paul,’ I said. ‘You really think you’re a master spy, don’t you? Are you sure you want to get out, or do you really want to get in deeper?’

‘I need help, Bernd.’

‘Where did you hide your car?’

‘You can drive along the beach when the tide is out.’

I should have thought of that one. The tide comes in and washes away the tyre tracks. It had fooled Stinnes and his pal too. Sometimes amateurs can teach the pros a trick or two. ‘The tide is out now,’ I said. ‘Get it and give me a lift into the village, will you, before someone starts renting my Chevvy out as a bijou residence.’

‘Keep the sweater,’ he said. ‘It looks good on you.’

5

‘Muy complicado,’ said Dicky. We were elbowing our way through a huge cobbled plaza that twice a week became one of Mexico City’s busiest street markets, and he was listening to my account of the trip to Paul Biedermann’s house. It was what Dicky called combining business with pleasure. ‘Muy bloody complicado,’ he said reflectively. That was Dicky’s way of saying he didn’t understand.

‘Not very complicated,’ I said. I’d found Biedermann’s story depressingly simple – too simple, perhaps, to be the whole truth – but not complicated.

‘Biedermann hiding in the bloody pool all night clasping a gun?’ said Dicky with heavy irony. ‘No, not complicated at all, of course.’ He’d been chewing the nail of his little finger and now he inspected it. ‘You’re not telling me you believed all that stuff?’

The sun was very hot. Towering cumulus clouds were building up to the east and the humidity was becoming intolerable. We were walking down a line of vendors selling secondhand hardware that varied from ancient spark plugs to fake Nazi medals. Dicky stopped to look at some broken pottery figurines that a handwritten notice said were ancient Olmec. Dicky picked one up and looked at it. It looked too new to be genuine, but then so did many of the fragments in the National Museum.

Dicky passed it to me and walked on. I put it back on the ground with the other junk. I had too many broken fragments in my life already. I found Dicky looking at a basketful of silver-plated bracelets. ‘I must get some little presents to take back to London,’ he said.

‘Which parts of Biedermann’s story do you think were not true?’ I asked him.

‘Never mind the exam questions,’ snapped Dicky. He didn’t want to be in Mexico; he wanted to be in London making sure his job was secure. In some perverse way he blamed me for his situation, although, God knows, no one would have waved goodbye to him with more pleasure.

He started bargaining with the Indian squatting behind the folk-art jewellery. After a series of offers and counter-offers, Dicky agreed to buy six of them. He crouched down and solemnly began to sort through all of them to find the best six.

‘I’m asking you what you believe and what you don’t believe,’ I said. ‘Hell, Dicky. You’re in charge. I need to know.’

Still crouched down, he looked at me from under the eyelashes that made him the heart-throb of the typing pool. He knew I was goading him. ‘You think I’ve been swanning around in Los Angeles wasting my time and the department’s money, don’t you?’ Dicky was looking very Hollywood since his return from California. The faded jeans had gone, replaced by striped seersucker trousers and a short-sleeved green safari shirt with loops to hold rhino bullets.

‘Why would I think that?’

Satisfied with his choice of bracelets, he sorted out his Mexican money and paid for them. He smiled and put the bracelets in the pocket of his shirt. ‘I saw Frank Harrington in LA. You didn’t know I was going to see Frank, did you?’

Frank Harrington headed the Berlin Field Unit. He was an old experienced Whitehall warrior with influence where it really counted: at the very top. I didn’t like the idea of Dicky sliding off to meetings with him, especially meetings from which I was deliberately excluded. ‘No, I didn’t know.’

‘Frank was attending some CIA powwow and I buttonholed him to talk about Stinnes.’ We’d got to the end of the line and Dicky turned to go up the next row of stalls; brightly coloured fruit and vegetables on one side and broken furniture on the other. ‘This is not just another Mexican street market,’ said Dicky, who’d insisted that we come here. ‘This is a tiangui – an Indian market. Not many tourists get to see them.’

‘It might have been better to have come earlier. It’s always so damned hot by lunchtime.’

Dicky chuckled scornfully. ‘If I don’t jog and have a decent breakfast I can’t get going.’

‘Perhaps we should have found a hotel right here in town. Going backwards and forwards to Cuernavaca eats up a lot of time.’

‘A couple of miles jogging every morning would do you good, Bernard. You’re putting on a lot of weight. It’s all that stodge you eat.’

‘I like stodge,’ I said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Look at all these wonderful fresh vegetables and delicious fruit. Look at those great heaps of chillies. There must be fifty different kinds. I wish I’d brought the camera with me now.’

‘Does Frank know anything about Stinnes?’

‘Ye gods. Frank knows everyone in Berlin. You know that, Bernard. Frank says Stinnes is one of their brightest people. Frank has a fat file on him, and all his activities from one end of the world to the other.’

I nodded. Frank always claimed to have fat files on everything when he was away from his office. It was only when you were with him in Berlin that the ‘fat file’ turned out to be a small pink card with ‘Refer to Data Centre’ scribbled on it. ‘Good old Frank,’ I said.

This end of the market beyond the vegetables was occupied by food stalls. Almost everyone in the market seemed to be eating. They were eating and buying, eating and selling, eating and chatting, and even eating as they smoked and drank. Some of the more dedicated were sitting down to eat, and for these aficionados seats were provided. There were chairs and stools of every kind, age and size, with nothing in common but their infirmity.

Most of the stalls had steaming pots from which stewed mixtures of rice, chicken, pork and every variety of beans were being served. There were charcoal grills too, laden with pieces of scorching meat that filled the air with smoke and appetizing smells. And the ever-present tortillas were being eaten as fast as they could be kneaded, rolled out and cooked. An old lady came up to Dicky and handed him a tortilla. Dicky was disconcerted and tried to argue with her.

‘She wants you to feel the texture and admire the colour,’ I said.

Dicky gave her one of his big smiles, fingered it as if he was going to have it made up into a three-piece suit, and handed it back with a lot of ‘Gracias, adios’.

‘Stinnes speaks excellent Spanish,’ I said. ‘Did Frank tell you anything about that?’

‘You were right about Stinnes. He went to Cuba to sort out some of their security problems. He did so well that he became the KGB’s Caribbean trouble-shooter all through the early seventies. He’s been to just about all the places where the Cubans have sent soldiers; and that’s a lot of travelling.’

‘Does Frank know why Stinnes is here?’

‘I think you’ve answered that already,’ said Dicky. ‘He’s here running your friend Biedermann.’ He looked at me and, when I didn’t respond, said, ‘Don’t you think so, Bernard?’

‘Arranging a little money to prop up a trade union or finance an anti-nuke demo? Not exactly something for one of the KGB’s brightest people, is it?’

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Dicky. ‘Central America is a top KGB priority, you can’t deny that, Bernard.’

‘Let me put it another way,’ I said. ‘Covert financing of that sort is an administration job. It’s not something for Stinnes with his languages and years of field experience.’

‘Ho ho,’ said Dicky. ‘Hint, hint, eh? You mean, you chaps with field experience and fluent languages are wasted on the sort of job that administrators like me can manage?’

It was exactly what I thought, but since it wasn’t what I’d intended to say I denied it. ‘Why the German name?’ I said. ‘And why does a man like that work out of Berlin? He must be forty years old; a crucial age for an ambitious man. Why isn’t he in Moscow where the really big decisions are made?’

‘Si, maestro,’ said Dicky very slowly. He looked at me quizzically and ran a fingertip along his thin bloodless lips as if trying to prevent himself from smiling. Instead of concealing my own feelings, I’d subconsciously identified with Stinnes. For I was also forty years old and I wanted to be where the big decisions are made. Dicky nodded solemnly. He might be a little slow on languages and fieldwork but in the game of office politics he was seeded number one. ‘Frank Harrington had an answer for that one. Stinnes – real name Nikolai Sadoff – married a German girl who couldn’t master the Russian language. They lived in Moscow for some time but she was miserable there. Stinnes finally asked for a transfer. They live in East Berlin. Frank Harrington thinks a Mexico City assignment will probably be a quick in and out for Stinnes.’

‘Yes, he talked as if he was going soon – “when I’ve gone back to Europe”, he said.’

‘He said the Englishwoman had put him in charge of one of her crazy schemes, didn’t he?’

‘More or less,’ I said.

‘And we both know who the Englishwoman is, don’t we? Your wife is running this operation. It was your wife who sent the telex from Berlin that they grudgingly obeyed. Right?’

I said nothing.

Dicky stared at me, his mouth pursed, his eyes narrowed. ‘Is it right or not?’ He smiled. ‘Or do you think they might have some other Englishwoman running the KGB office in Berlin.’

‘Probably Fiona,’ I said.

‘Well, I’m glad we agree on that one,’ said Dicky sarcastically. It was only when I heard the contempt in his voice that I realized that he hated working on this job with me as much as I did with him. In the London office our relationship was tolerable; but on this type of job every little difference became abrasive. Dicky turned away from me and took a great interest in the various pots of stew. One of the stallholders opened the lids so that we could sniff. ‘Smell that,’ I said. ‘There’s enough chilli in there to put you into orbit.’

‘Obit, you mean,’ said Dicky, moving on quickly. ‘Put you into the Times obit column.’ His dinner with the Volkmanns had lessened his appetite for the chilli. ‘Our friend Paul Biedermann is going soggy on them. He starts making up stories about British spies telephoning him, and who knows what other sort of nonsense he’s been telling them. So they get nervous and Stinnes is sent over here to kick arses and get Biedermann back into line.’

‘Is that also what Frank says?’

‘No, that’s what I’m saying. It’s obvious. I don’t know why you are being so baroque about it. Maybe it’s not a very big deal. But these KGB people like a nice little jaunt to Mexico, fresh lobster salad and a swim in the Pacific to brighten up their working days. Stinnes is no different.’

‘It doesn’t feel right. Biedermann is rich and successful; he is woolly-minded and flabby with it. He doesn’t have the motivation, and he certainly doesn’t need the money.’

‘So what? Biedermann was frightened for his family. Shall we eat here? Some of this food looks really good. Look at that.’ He read the sign. ‘What are carnitas?’

‘Stewed pork. He’s serving it on chicharrones: pork crackling. You eat the meat, then eat the plate. Biedermann wouldn’t give that plate of pork for his family, and especially not for distant relatives in Rostock.’

‘We’ll walk to the end and see what else there is and then come back here and try some,’ Dicky suggested. Dicky could always surprise me. Just as I had decided he was the archetypal gringo tourist, he wanted to have lunch at a fonda. ‘So what’s your theory?’

‘I have no theory,’ I said. ‘Agents come in many shapes and sizes. Some are waiting for the socialist millennium, some hate their parents, some get angry after being ripped off by a loan company. Some simply want more money. But usually it begins with opportunity. A man finds himself handling something secret and valuable. He starts thinking about using that opportunity to get more money. Only then does he become a dedicated communist agent. So how does Biedermann fit into that? Where are his secrets? What’s his motivation?’

‘Guilt,’ said Dicky. ‘He feels guilty about his wealth.’

‘If you’d ever met Paul Biedermann you’d know what a good joke that is.’

‘Blackmail, then?’

‘About what?’

‘Sex.’

‘Paul Biedermann would pay to have people say he was a sex maniac. He thinks of himself as a rich playboy.’

‘You let your acute dislike of Paul Biedermann spill over into your judgements, Bernard. The fact of the matter is that Biedermann is an agent. You heard the two KGB people talking. He is an agent; it’s no good your trying to convince yourself he’s not.’

‘Oh, he’s an agent,’ I said. ‘But he’s not the sort of agent that a man such as Stinnes would be running. That’s what puzzles me.’

‘Your experience makes you over-estimate what qualities an agent needs. Try and see it from their point of view: rich US businessman – someone the local cops would be reluctant to upset – isolated house on a lonely stretch of beach in western Mexico, not too far by road from the capital. And not too far by sea from Vladivostok.’

‘Landing guns, you mean?’

‘A man with a reputation for drinking who gets so rough with his servants that he’s left all alone in the house. Wife and children often away. Convenient beach, pier big enough for a big motor boat.’

‘Come along, Dicky,’ I said. ‘This is just a holiday cottage by Biedermann’s standards. This is just a place he goes to read the Wall Street Journal and spend the weekend dreaming up a quick way to make a million or two.’

‘So for half the year the house is completely empty. Then Stinnes and his pals have the place all to themselves. We know guns go from Cuba to Mexico’s east coast and onwards by light plane. So why not bring them across the Pacific from the country where they are manufactured?’ We’d got to the end of the food stalls and Dicky became interested in a stall selling pictures. There were family group photos and coloured litho portraits of generals and presidents. All of the pictures were in fine old frames.

‘It doesn’t smell right,’ I said. But Dicky had put together a convincing scenario. If it was the house they were interested in, it didn’t matter what kind of aptitude Biedermann had for being a field agent. Yes, London Central would love a report along those lines. It had the drama they liked. It had the geopolitic that called for maps and coloured diagrams. And, as a bottom line, it could be true.

‘If it doesn’t smell right,’ said Dicky with heavy irony, ‘I’ll tell London to forget the whole thing.’ He stood up straight as he looked at the selection of pictures for sale, and I realized he was studying his reflection in the glass-fronted pictures. He was too thin for the large, bright-green safari shirt. It made him look like a lollipop. ‘Is it going to rain?’ he said, looking at the time. He’d bought a new wrist-watch too. It was a multi-dial black chronometer that kept perfect time at 50 fathoms.

‘It seldom rains in the morning, even during the rainy season.’

‘It will bucket down on the stroke of noon, then,’ said Dicky, looking up at the clouds that were now turning yellowish.

‘I’m still not sure what London wants with Stinnes,’ I said.

‘London want Stinnes enrolled,’ he said, as if he’d just remembered it. ‘Shall we walk back to where the pork is? What did you say it’s called – carnitas?’

‘Enrolled?’ It could mean a lot of things from persuaded to defect, to knocked on the head and rolled in a carpet. ‘That would be difficult.’

‘The bigger they are the harder they fall,’ said Dicky. ‘You said yourself that he’s forty years old and passed over for promotion. He’s been stuck in East Berlin for ages. Berlin is a plum job for Western intelligence but it’s the boondocks for their people. A smart KGB major left to rot in East Berlin is sure to be fretting.’

‘I suppose his wife likes it there,’ I said.

‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Dicky. ‘Would I take an intelligence job in Canada because my wife liked ice hockey?’