‘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 you see what I mean, Bernard?’
‘Yes, I see what you mean all right. You mean that if I and that kid invented the hold-up at the checkpoint we could have got there and killed VERDI ourselves.’
‘Using that pistol that came from nowhere,’ added Frank for good measure. ‘It could look bad if someone wanted to throw mud at you.’
‘Ask the kid. He’s Dicky’s man isn’t he?’
‘Very much Dicky’s man,’ agreed Frank amiably. ‘He wants to please Dicky; Dicky says there might eventually be a place for him in London.’
‘He’s a decent kid. He wouldn’t tell lies. He’d tell an inquiry the truth, and blow Dicky’s theory sky-high.’
‘I’m glad you are so confident about that,’ said Frank. ‘That settles my mind. But of course one can’t guarantee anyone a job in London. Nowadays a young chap like that one can find himself posted to some God-forsaken place in Asia or Africa. Some of them are out of touch for years.’ He opened the door of the stove and prodded the burned paper delicately with a poker. For a moment I thought he was going to throw my report in there. Such dramatic gestures by Frank were not unknown. But instead he tried again to light the fire using small pieces torn from a newspaper. He was rewarded by a sudden flame and pushed a piece of kindling into it.
‘Point taken, Frank,’ I said.
He looked up and gave a fleeting smile, pleased perhaps at his success with the fire. ‘Of course I’ve kept this business very need-to-know. Dicky, me, you, and of course what’s-his-name: this youngster who went with you.’
‘Plus secretaries, code-clerks and messengers – any one of them might have leaked it,’ I added, joining in the silly game in an effort to show the absurdity of his conspiracy theory. ‘And there’s VERDI too. He knew we were coming, didn’t he?’
‘Of course he did. And who knows who else got