Spy Hook

Perhaps I should have been more restrained when drinking my way through Frank’s big pot of strong coffee, for I remained awake for hours thinking about Fiona who would by now be tucked up in bed somewhere just a few blocks away. In my mind’s eye I saw her so clearly. Would she be alone or were there two people in that bed? A deluge of memories came flooding into my mind. But I forced myself to think of other matters. Lisl and what would become of the old house after she sold it. It was a valuable site: so near the Ku-Damm. Any speculator would do what all speculators do everywhere: chase out the residents and the family-owned shops and old-fashioned eating places, bulldoze everything in sight to build ugly concrete and glass offices that yielded high rent for landlords and high taxes for the government. It was a depressing thought.

And I thought about Klara’s provocative little story about spotting the Director-General in the Hotel Kempinski. It didn’t make sense for a number of reasons. First the D-G was sick and had been for months. Secondly he hated to travel anywhere outside England. The only official trip he’d done, apart from the odd conference in Washington DC, was to the Far East. As far as I could remember the D-G hadn’t visited Berlin for at least five years. And, thirdly, had he come he wouldn’t have taken a room in a big Berlin hotel: he’d have been Frank’s house-guest, or if it was official, been a guest of the general commanding the British forces. But where Klara’s story really rang false was saying that the D-G recognized her. The D-G couldn’t remember the name of his own Labrador dog without having Morgan – his faithful attendant – prompt him.

I tried to sleep but sleep didn’t come. There was so much to think about. And I couldn’t help noticing the promptness with which Frank had denied knowing Jim Prettyman. He hadn’t hemmed and hawed or asked why I’d mentioned his name. It was a flat no and a change of subject. It wasn’t like Frank’s normal behaviour to be so lacking in curiosity: in fact it wasn’t like anyone’s normal behaviour.

6

‘I told Willi not to put that damned machine in here,’ Werner said, looking up from his big plate of beef to where two white-coated surgeons were poking screwdrivers deep into the entrails of an old jukebox that had clearly been kicked into silence. Willi Leuschner, the proprietor, watched as grim-faced as any grieving relative. Apparently certain pop-music aficionados of the late evening hours voted with their feet.

We were sitting in one of the booths near the window. When we were kids we had all firmly believed that the people in the window seats got bigger portions to attract passers-by. I still don’t know whether it’s true or not but it wasn’t something that either of us wanted to take a chance on.

‘You can’t trust music critics,’ I said. ‘Toscanini could have told him that.’

‘I’ll bet that his jukebox is not insured,’ said Werner. He had the sort of mind that thought in terms of expenditure, percentages, interest rates, risk and insurance.

‘It was offered cheap,’ I explained. ‘Willi thought it would bring more teenagers.’

‘He’d make a lot of money from penniless teenagers, wouldn’t he?’ said Werner with heavy irony. ‘He should be glad they keep away, not trying to find a way of attracting them.’

Even after a lifetime’s friendship, Werner could still surprise me. It was his often expressed view that juvenile delinquency was to be blamed on TV, single-parent families, unemployment or too much sugar in the diet. Was this new reactionary stand against teenagers a sign that Werner was growing old, the way I’d been all my life?

Werner made his money by avalizing: which means he financed East European exports to the West with hard currency borrowed from anywhere he could get it. He paid high interest and he lived on narrow margins. It was a tough way to make a living but Werner seemed to flourish on the hazards and difficulties of this curious bywater of the financial world. Like many of his rivals he had no banking experience, and his formal education went no further than the legerdemain that comes from prodding a Japanese calculator.

‘I thought you liked young people, Werner,’ I said.

He looked at me and scowled. He was always accusing me of being intolerant and narrow-minded, but on the issue of keeping my haunts Jungend-frei I was with him, and so were a lot of Berliners. You don’t have to walk far down Potsdamer Strasse before starting to believe that universal military conscription for teenagers might be a good idea.

There was something different about Werner today. It wasn’t his new beard – a fine full-set with moustache – when it was fully grown he’d look like a prosperous Edwardian beer baron or some business associate of Sir Basil Zaharoff. It wasn’t just that he was noticeably overweight, he was always overweight between his dedicated slimming regimes; nor the fact that he’d arrived absurdly early for our appointment. But he was unusually restless. While waiting for the meal to arrive he’d fidgeted with the salt and pepper as well as tugging at his earlobes and pinching his nose and staring out of the window as if his mind was somewhere else. I wondered if he was thinking of some other appointment he had, for Werner, in his tailor-made suit and silk shirt, was not dressed for this sort of eating-place.

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